SHAKESPEARE’S complete works, Dante’s Divine Comedy and other classic works of literature were made available to download and print free of charge yesterday.

A new service from Google, the internet search engine, allows patient readers armed with reams of paper to print out a facsimile of the entire original work, even if it runs to several hundred pages.

Google, whose stated mission is “to organise the world’s information”, believes that it will help to stimulate interest in classic works — although publishers are nervous that making books freely available could undermine their business.

The search engine has been scanning out-of-copyright classics from the Bodleian Library in Oxford and a series of American libraries, and is now making them available on books.google.com.

However, even Google conceded that not everybody would want to read Henry V on a pile of computer printouts. Jens Redmer, the head of Google’s book search programme, said: “Reading a book online is cumbersome, and so is printing out.

“It may be the case that rather than cannibalise the market for classic publications, we help to grow it as people go out and buy the book.”

Victoria Barnsley, the chief executive and publisher at HarperCollins UK, said that her concerns were whether Google could police the copyright issues effectively, and that the online book giveway “adds to the feeling that content is free on the internet”.

Book publishers are grappling with how to make money from sales online, even though the market is in its infancy and nobody has managed to come up with a satisfactory electronic book-reader. But by concentrating on out-of-copyright material, Google is shying away from the conflict with publishers that was widely expected when it began the scanning programme.

Copyright rules vary around the world, but in Britain copyright lasts until 70 years after the author’s death. In the United States, books published before 1923 are usually considered in the public domain, although Mr Redmer said that Google did not want to “go beyond the mid-19th century” in an effort to be conservative.

Mark Le Fanu, general secretary of the Society of Authors, said: “It’s yet one more piece of evidence that Google wants to take over the world. Maybe in due course publishers will lose revenue, but I think by and large people want the book rather than having it online.”

At present home download and printer speeds, it could end up being more expensive to get hold of a free copy of a classic work.

An 1825 complete works of Shakespeare, found by the Google book search, runs to 908 pages and takes 56.6 megabytes of data.

Downloading the tome would take up to five minutes on a broadband fast internet link, and could take approaching an hour on a traditional dial-up connection. But the determined reader would have to endure reading the plays on a backlit screen.

Printing out, though, adds to the complexity. Using a cheap home printer working at 12 pages a minute, it would take 75 minutes to produce the entire book for bedtime reading.

The exercise could easily consume an entire ink cartridge, which costs between £35 and £40.

On Amazon it is possible to buy a paperback Complete Works of Shakespeare for £4.79.