Back in 2009, the blogger/YouTuber “Turretinfan” posted a handy list of the Ancient Christian Writers volumes (68 in total). Nine of the volumes have links to archive.org where they are freely available. I periodically visit Turretinfan’s blog but don’t recall ever seeing this list before today. Unfortunately, he is not maintaining the list, as is evident from comments in 2014, 2015, and 2018.
Thinking there must have been volumes added in the last 14 years, I decided to search. Out of habit, I use Google Books more than the Internet Archive (for texts), though my habit is quickly shifting towards the latter. It’s possible (or probable) that I’m late to the party and posting something most of the rest of the world already knows but stumbling on “Collections” on archive.org today made my day.
The first collection I found is another list of the Ancient Christian Writers (ACW) series. The page for this collection has them listed and numbered with the year published, the title, and the ISBN. Very handy but there’s more to the collection than it’s nice description. The files are in one place and you can download a .zip file of all the PDF’s in the collection. I’m not sure what the copyright situation is with these or other texts, or how they police that but the ACW collection includes 51 files. One of them (volume 60) is from 2004. Whatever the case, it’s wonderful to have all these accessible in one location. The old list from Turretinfan only linked nine that were available in 2009, all at separate URL’s. Of course, that means you can only download them individually.
After a few minutes of searching, I was able to unearth a few other useful collections. What I found is below. I’d love to add to the list if anyone is aware of any others. Download and use at your own risk:
Downloadable collections
Various authors/texts: Ancient Christian Writers (Paulist Press) – 51 of 68 volumes in the series.
The Works of Saint Augustine: A translation for the 21st Century (New City Press) – A newer series (see here)…this collection includes 11 volumes of over 400 sermons.
Various authors/texts: The Early Church Fathers (Routledge) – Another newer series (see here) with 15 volumes on early church fathers including nice introductions, commentary, and translations of key texts.
J.P. Migne: Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Graeca (PG) – This appears to have all 161 volumes as well as another 140 files in Greek – not sure what they are, exactly. Maybe some of them are transcriptions?