100 Classic Books for under 20 British Pounds

by Chris Greenhough { Dec 8th 2008 at 12:30PM }

Nintendo plans to confront the ailing economy head-on ... by making 100 Classic Book Collection really cheap! As with many of its Touch! Generations titles, Nintendo has confirmed a budget price point of £19.99 for the game, and a UK release date of December 26.

If, like us, you've been keeping one eye on the game's Amazon listing (which has had that date for a while, but it's nice to get official confirmation, right?), you'll know you can get it even cheaper: just £14.99 (just over $22). That's under fifteen pence a book! Fifteen pence for portable copies of Sense and Sensibility, Treasure Island, Moby Dick, and a wealth of Shakespeare and Dickens (there's a full list after the break) sounds like a bargain to us.* The pound is currently weak, so anybody thinking of importing?

Gallery: 100 Classic Book Collection

"Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott
"Emma" by Jane Austen
"Mansfield Park" by Jane Austen
"Persuasion" by Jane Austen
"Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen
"Sense and Sensibility" by Jane Austen
"Stowe Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher
"Lorna Doone" by R.D. Blackmore
"The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" by Anne Bronte
"Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte
"The Professor" by Charlotte Bronte
"Shirley" by Charlotte Bronte
"Villette" by Charlotte Bronte
"Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte
"The Pilgrim's Progress" by John Bunyan
"Little Lord Fauntleroy" by Frances Burnett
"The Secret Garden" by Frances Burnett
"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll
"Through the Looking-Glass" by Lewis Carroll
"The Moonstone" by Wilkie Collins
"The Woman in White" by Wilkie Collins
"The Adventures of Pinocchio" by Carlo Collodi
"The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" by Arthur Conan Doyle
"The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes" by Arthur Conan Doyle
"Lord Jim" by Joseph Conrad
"What Katy Did" by Susan Coolidge
"Last of the Mohicans" by James Fenimore Cooper
"Robinson Crusoe" by Daniel Defoe
"Barnaby Rudge" by Charles Dickens
"Bleak House" by Charles Dickens
"A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens
"David Copperfield" by Charles Dickens
"Dombey and Son" by Charles Dickens
"Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens
"Hard Times" by Charles Dickens
"Martin Chuzzlewit" by Charles Dickens
"Nicholas Nickleby" by Charles Dickens
"The Old Curiosity Shop" by Charles Dickens
"Oliver Twist" by Charles Dickens
"The Pickwick Papers" by Charles Dickens
"A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens
"The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas
"The Three Musketeers" by Alexandre Dumas
"Adam Bede" by George Eliot
"Middlemarch" by George Eliot
"The Mill on the Floss" by George Eliot
"King Solomon's Mines" by Henry Rider Haggard
"Far From The Madding Crowd" by Thomas Hardy
"The Mayor of Casterbridge" by Thomas Hardy
"Tess of The D'Urbervilles" by Thomas Hardy
"Under the Greenwood Tree" by Thomas Hardy
"The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne
"The Hunchback of Notre Dame" by Victor Hugo
"Les Miserables" by Victor Hugo
"The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon" by Washington Irving
"Westward Ho!" by Charles Kingsley
"Sons And Lovers" by D.H. Lawrence
"The Phantom of the Opera" by Gaston Leroux
"The Call of the Wild" by Jack London
"White Fang" by Jack London
"Moby Dick" by Herman Melville
"Tales of Mystery and Imagination" by Edgar Allen Poe
"Ivanhoe" by Sir Walter Scott
"Rob Roy" by Sir Walter Scott
"Waverley" by Sir Walter Scott
"Black Beauty" by Anna Sewell
"All's Well That Ends Well" by William Shakespeare
"Antony and Cleopatra" by William Shakespeare
"As You Like It" by William Shakespeare
"The Comedy of Errors" by William Shakespeare
"Hamlet" by William Shakespeare
"Julius Caesar" by William Shakespeare
"King Henry the Fifth" by William Shakespeare
"King Lear" by William Shakespeare
"King Richard the Third" by William Shakespeare
"Love's Labour's Lost" by William Shakespeare
"Macbeth" by William Shakespeare
"The Merchant of Venice" by William Shakespeare
"A Midsummer-Night's Dream" by William Shakespeare
"Much Ado About Nothing" by William Shakespeare
"Othello, the Moor of Venice" by William Shakespeare
"Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare
"The Taming of the Shrew" by William Shakespeare
"The Tempest" by William Shakespeare
"Timon of Athens" by William Shakespeare
"Titus Andronicus" by William Shakespeare
"Twelfth Night" by William Shakespeare
"The Winter's Tale" by William Shakespeare
"Kidnapped" by Robert Louis Stevenson
"The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson
"Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson
"Gulliver's Travels" by Jonathan Swift
"Vanity Fair" by William Thackeray
"Barchester Towers" by Anthony Trollope
"Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain
"Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain
"Round the World in Eighty Days" by Jules Verne
"20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" by Jules Verne
"The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde
"The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde

* We realize that these are all public domain titles and can be legally downloaded for nothing and read using Moon Books but, y'know, it's a hassle.

[Via press release]

Tags: 100-classic-book-collection, ds-bungaku-zenshuu, ds-novel, literature, nongame, novel, touch-generations, uk

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

atastysammich @ Dec 8th 2008 1:06PM

Someone wanna explain to me what the WiFi logo's doing on the box?

Chris Greenhough @ Dec 8th 2008 1:14PM

A further ten books will be made available over Wi-Fi after release.

Chris @ Dec 8th 2008 1:15PM

From the amazon page linked in the article:

"With a Nintendo Wi-Fi connection, you can go online from your DS and download 10 additional books as well as rank your favourite titles"

Chris Greenhough @ Dec 8th 2008 1:23PM

Nice spot, Chris! Could be interesting to see how people rank these.

jklope4 @ Dec 8th 2008 2:45PM

The bulk of Austen? Yes, please. I'm also impressed they fit Bleak House on there.

Shoyz @ Dec 8th 2008 1:32PM

Excuse me? How is that cheap? They had to develop practically -Nothing-! All they had to do was download some books, create some sort of Txt/PDF viewer which has already been made by a bunch of Homebrew devs, and make a ton of profits.

Change it to $10, that'd really be cheap, you scam artists >:/

Jacksons @ Dec 8th 2008 7:56PM

Haha, no kidding. The development cycle was probably a slow Wednesday afternoon.

Ethan @ Dec 11th 2008 9:16AM

Did you know a book doesn't cost �10 to print either? Gosh!

eubep @ Dec 8th 2008 1:43PM

I know where to get Asian imports but where the f*** do I get European imports?

Chris Greenhough @ Dec 8th 2008 3:31PM

This could help, eubep:

http://nintendo.joystiq.com/2008/06/19/ds-daily-importing-from-europe/

Mert @ Dec 8th 2008 3:09PM

Whoa, I'm totally getting this.

Scuffles @ Dec 8th 2008 5:19PM

Translation :: 100 books we didn't need to pay licensing fees to use, but are going to charge you for.

Might be interesting when it hits the 99c rack but I for one didn't buy my DS to read books on .... and I totally agree homebrew could and probably has done this already, For free and quite possibly with the same public domain books whatever company released this shovelware used.

pxt @ Dec 8th 2008 9:55PM

You're paying for the reader software and any additional features. If the presentation is good enough, it would be a bargain and worth every cent.

On the other hand, if the interface is worse than homebrew, then yes, you're right and perhaps it'd be time to get out the pitchforks.

HellishINC @ Dec 9th 2008 3:33AM

Ill stick to DSLIBRIS thank you very much.

aj @ Dec 9th 2008 4:10AM

I'm illiterate, you insensitive clod!

Lianne @ Dec 9th 2008 10:24AM

Interesting...if this releases State-side and is cheap enough ($10 or less), I might consider it. I used to use my PDA to read books, but it was a hassle to find them...most of the e-book download sites make you use their software to open the file. Lame...