io.github.cyanheads/gutenberg-mcp-server

pkg:npm:@cyanheads/gutenberg-mcp-server

MCP server for Project Gutenberg — 75,000+ public-domain ebooks with full plain-text retrieval.

transport:: remote + stdio
credential class:: self-provisionable
repo:: https://github.com/cyanheads/gutenberg-mcp-server

Owner verification

Not yet verified. Verifying proves you control this server and is free, permanently — it never changes a published score.

Start verification →

Tools

gutenberg_browse_popular
Browse the most-downloaded Project Gutenberg books, ordered by popularity. Returns up to 32 titles with their Gutenberg IDs, authors, languages, and download counts. Optionally filter by language or topic. Use this as a discovery entry point — "what are the most popular classics in French?" — or as a heartbeat check that the catalog is reachable.
shallow
gutenberg_get_book
Fetch complete metadata for a Project Gutenberg book by ID — title, authors (with birth/death years), translators, editors, subjects, bookshelves, languages, copyright status, and the full formats map with download URLs for each available format (plain text, HTML, EPUB, cover image, etc.). Use this before gutenberg_get_text to confirm a plain-text format is available and to get the direct download URL.
shallow
gutenberg_get_text
Retrieve the plain-text content of a Project Gutenberg book, stripped of the standard license header and footer so the response contains only the literary work. For long works — novels routinely run 500KB–2MB — use offset and limit to read in chunks rather than fetching the whole book at once. The response reports totalChars and remainingChars for reliable pagination. Prefers UTF-8 plain text; falls back to an HTML edition converted to text; refuses audio books (media_type "Sound") with a clear error.
shallow
gutenberg_search_books
Search the Project Gutenberg catalog of 78,000+ public-domain books. Matches title and author name with query words; filters by topic (subject or bookshelf keyword), language, author lifespan, or a specific list of Gutenberg IDs. Results are ordered by popularity (download count) by default. Returns book ID, title, authors, languages, subjects, and download count — use gutenberg_get_book for the full formats map before fetching text.
shallow

Embed this server’s score

Tool count and median score across every tool in this server’s corpus — honest in a way a single cherry-picked tool’s badge wouldn’t be.

[![Vouch score](https://vouch.tools/api/servers/ce86a67f-f06f-4608-8ca5-bbbd60a1859b/badge.svg)](https://vouch.tools/servers/ce86a67f-f06f-4608-8ca5-bbbd60a1859b)