HermitshHermitsh Texts

Tools and texts for humans and AI systems.

About this project

Hermitsh Press rebuilds public-domain literature into complete editions for readers, teachers, scholars, writers, and AI systems that need better access to source material.

The aim is not to replace art or scholarship. The aim is to make works that already belong to everyone easier to read, search, cite, compare, teach, and connect to modern tools.

13authors live
200author target
51language targets

What is being built

Hermitsh takes works that already belong to everyone and turns them into editions that are easier to read, search, cite, carry to Kindle, and connect to future AI tools.

The long-term goal is a corpus of roughly 200 authors, beginning with complete English editions and expanding toward many languages per author, always from the original-language source material rather than from prior English translations.

How the editions are made

Translation from the source language.

The editions are produced from original-language material: Latin for the Roman authors, Greek for Greek authors, and so on. The goal is not to lightly repackage an old public-domain English translation.

Claude is part of a larger editorial pipeline.

The work is not a single prompt. Each corpus requires source preparation, iterative translation, consistency checks, editorial review, metadata extraction, glossary construction, cross-linking, formatting, and publication across web and Kindle editions.

Structure matters as much as prose.

The author sites collect people, places, works, dates, source links, glossary entries, and passage structure while the translation work happens. That structure is what later enables search, citations, reading paths, APIs, and AI retrieval.

Why this matters

For readers.

Readers should be able to find the person, argument, feeling, event, or passage they want without already being specialists.

For scholars and teachers.

Complete corpora, stable passage links, glossary records, chronology, and source-grounded search should make the material easier to teach, quote, compare, and inspect.

For future AI systems.

If AI systems are going to mediate more reading and research, they need clean, source-linked corpora rather than fragments, summaries, and ungrounded memory.

AI access

The first major interactive goal is to let a reader ask questions and receive answers grounded in exact passages. The assistant should retrieve source material, cite the relevant work, link back to the passage, and distinguish direct evidence from interpretation.

When AI access is live, setup should be simple: choose an assistant, copy one short instruction, and use Hermitsh as a source-linked corpus for questions about the authors and works in the library.

Coming soon

Target authors

The working queue is a reference list, not a promise of exact order. Grouping by source language makes the shape of the future library easier to scan.

Published now.
Caesar 100-44 BCE Catullus c. 84-c. 54 BCE Cicero 106-43 BCE Horace 65-8 BCE Livy 59 BCE-17 CE Lucretius c. 99-c. 55 BCE Marcus Aurelius 121-180 CE Ovid 43 BCE-17/18 CE Pliny the Younger 61/62-c. 113 CE Sallust 86-c. 35 BCE Seneca c. 4 BCE-65 CE Tacitus c. 56-c. 120 CE Virgil 70-19 BCE
Greek and Greek-language authors.
Homer c. 8th c. BCE Hesiod c. 8th-7th c. BCE Sappho c. 630-c. 570 BCE Pindar c. 518-c. 438 BCE Aeschylus c. 525-456 BCE Sophocles c. 496-406 BCE Euripides c. 480-406 BCE Aristophanes c. 446-c. 386 BCE Herodotus c. 484-c. 425 BCE Thucydides c. 460-c. 400 BCE Xenophon c. 430-c. 354 BCE Plato c. 428-c. 348 BCE Aristotle 384-322 BCE Demosthenes 384-322 BCE Isocrates 436-338 BCE Theocritus c. 300-c. 260 BCE Apollonius of Rhodes 3rd c. BCE Polybius c. 200-c. 118 BCE Diodorus Siculus c. 90-c. 30 BCE Strabo c. 64 BCE-c. 24 CE Plutarch c. 46-c. 120 CE Epictetus c. 50-c. 135 CE Arrian c. 86-c. 160 CE Appian c. 95-c. 165 CE Pausanias c. 110-c. 180 CE Lucian c. 125-c. 180 CE Cassius Dio c. 155-c. 235 CE Diogenes Laertius 3rd c. CE Plotinus 204/5-270 CE Hippocrates c. 460-c. 370 BCE Galen 129-c. 216 CE
Latin and Latin-language authors.
Plautus c. 254-184 BCE Terence c. 195/185-159 BCE Varro 116-27 BCE Vitruvius c. 80/70-c. 15 BCE Propertius c. 50-c. 15 BCE Tibullus c. 55-19 BCE Lucan 39-65 CE Petronius d. c. 66 CE Quintilian c. 35-c. 100 CE Martial c. 38-c. 104 CE Juvenal c. 55-c. 130 CE Statius c. 45-c. 96 CE Suetonius c. 69-c. 122 CE Apuleius c. 124-after 170 CE Aulus Gellius c. 125-after 180 CE Ammianus Marcellinus c. 330-c. 395 CE Macrobius 5th c. CE Boethius c. 480-524 CE Augustine 354-430 CE Gregory of Tours c. 538-594 CE Isidore of Seville c. 560-636 CE Bede c. 672-735 CE Einhard c. 775-840 CE Anselm 1033-1109 CE Abelard 1079-1142 CE Hildegard of Bingen 1098-1179 CE Thomas Aquinas 1225-1274 CE
Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Dante 1265-1321 Petrarch 1304-1374 Boccaccio 1313-1375 Machiavelli 1469-1527 Leopardi 1798-1837 Manzoni 1785-1873 Christine de Pizan c. 1364-c. 1430 Rabelais c. 1494-1553 Montaigne 1533-1592 Pascal 1623-1662 Corneille 1606-1684 La Fontaine 1621-1695 Moliere 1622-1673 Racine 1639-1699 Montesquieu 1689-1755 Voltaire 1694-1778 Rousseau 1712-1778 Diderot 1713-1784 Stendhal 1783-1842 Balzac 1799-1850 Hugo 1802-1885 Flaubert 1821-1880 Baudelaire 1821-1867 Zola 1840-1902 Maupassant 1850-1893 Rimbaud 1854-1891 Proust 1871-1922 Cervantes 1547-1616 Lope de Vega 1562-1635 Calderon de la Barca 1600-1681 Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz 1648/51-1695 Camoes c. 1524-1580
English-language authors.
Chaucer c. 1343-1400 Shakespeare 1564-1616 Marlowe 1564-1593 Bacon 1561-1626 Donne 1572-1631 Milton 1608-1674 Hobbes 1588-1679 Locke 1632-1704 Hume 1711-1776 Adam Smith 1723-1790 Burke 1729-1797 Wollstonecraft 1759-1797 Blake 1757-1827 Wordsworth 1770-1850 Scott 1771-1832 Coleridge 1772-1834 Austen 1775-1817 Byron 1788-1824 Shelley 1792-1822 Keats 1795-1821 Mary Shelley 1797-1851 Emerson 1803-1882 Hawthorne 1804-1864 Poe 1809-1849 Thoreau 1817-1862 Melville 1819-1891 Dickinson 1830-1886 Whitman 1819-1892 Dickens 1812-1870 Charlotte Bronte 1816-1855 Emily Bronte 1818-1848 Anne Bronte 1820-1849 George Eliot 1819-1880 Hardy 1840-1928 Mark Twain 1835-1910 Henry James 1843-1916 Stevenson 1850-1894 Wilde 1854-1900 Conan Doyle 1859-1930 Edith Wharton 1862-1937 Frederick Douglass c. 1818-1895 Harriet Jacobs 1813-1897
German, Dutch/Latin, Russian, and Northern European.
Spinoza 1632-1677 Lessing 1729-1781 Kant 1724-1804 Goethe 1749-1832 Schiller 1759-1805 Pushkin 1799-1837 Lermontov 1814-1841 Gogol 1809-1852 Turgenev 1818-1883 Dostoevsky 1821-1881 Tolstoy 1828-1910 Chekhov 1860-1904 Kierkegaard 1813-1855 Andersen 1805-1875 Ibsen 1828-1906 Strindberg 1849-1912
Chinese and Japanese.
Confucius 551-479 BCE Sun Tzu c. 5th c. BCE Laozi trad. 6th-4th c. BCE Mozi c. 470-c. 391 BCE Zhuangzi c. 369-c. 286 BCE Mencius c. 372-289 BCE Xunzi c. 310-c. 235 BCE Sima Qian c. 145-c. 86 BCE Ban Gu 32-92 CE Tao Yuanming 365-427 CE Wang Wei 699-759 CE Li Bai 701-762 CE Du Fu 712-770 CE Bai Juyi 772-846 CE Su Shi 1037-1101 CE Li Qingzhao 1084-c. 1155 CE Luo Guanzhong c. 1330-c. 1400 Shi Nai'an c. 1296-c. 1372 Wu Cheng'en c. 1500-c. 1582 Cao Xueqin c. 1715-c. 1763 Murasaki Shikibu c. 973-c. 1014/25 Sei Shonagon c. 966-c. 1017/25 Zeami c. 1363-c. 1443 Matsuo Basho 1644-1694 Ihara Saikaku 1642-1693 Chikamatsu Monzaemon 1653-1725
Sanskrit, Indic, Persian, and Arabic.
Valmiki traditional, ancient Vyasa traditional, ancient Bhasa c. early centuries CE Kalidasa c. 4th-5th c. CE Shudraka traditional, uncertain Bhartrhari c. 5th c. CE Banabhatta 7th c. CE Jayadeva c. 12th c. CE Kabir c. 15th c. CE Mirabai c. 1498-c. 1546 Tulsidas c. 1532-1623 Ferdowsi c. 940-1020 Ibn Sina 980-1037 Omar Khayyam 1048-1131 Al-Ghazali 1058-1111 Ibn Rushd 1126-1198 Rumi 1207-1273 Saadi c. 1210-c. 1291 Hafez c. 1315-c. 1390 Ibn Khaldun 1332-1406

Language targets

Additional languages are planned, but complete author corpora take time to prepare even with AI assistance. The rollout will expand in stages as each language can be translated, checked, and published coherently.

View all 51 target languages.

Feedback

If you are a reader, teacher, scholar, developer, or just someone who cares about public texts, feedback is useful now. The project is still early enough that good criticism can change the shape of the library.

Send feedback Back to texts

Texts Feedback Cicero edition