The py-gutenberg package is a Python library that provides methods to access the Project Gutenberg library. Users can search for books based on a variety of metadata, get full texts in various formats, and retrieve metadata for books by their ID number.

⚠️ This package has only been tested on Python 3.7 and above. There are no plans for a Python 2 version.

The package can be installed using the pip package manager:

pip install py-gutenberg

You should import the module like so:

from gutenberg import GutenbergAPI

The GutenbergAPI constructor defaults to using the public instance of the Gutendex API, https://gutendex.com. If you are self-hosting the API, you can specify the IP address or URL of your instance with the instance_url parameter.

# Uses the public instance
gb = GutenbergAPI()
# Uses a self-hosted instance
gb_private = GutenbergAPI(instance_url="https://gutendex-two.com")

Here's a simple example to get a list of the most recently uploaded books:

gb.get_all_books()

Or, to get only public domain books:

gb.get_public_domain_books()

To get an individual book's metadata:

gb.get_book_metadata()

Or, to get the full text of a book:

gb.get_book_text()

Full usage information is available in the documentation

This module is built on the wonderful but unofficial API built by @garethbjohnson over at gutendex.com. I have no reason to believe the hosting they've setup is meant to sustain more than a few concurrent users, so please be kind a limit your requests where possible. Additionally, if you intend to use this in a production environment, it is highly encouraged that you self-host.