---
language:
  - pl
  - lt
  - de
  - en
  - fr
  - uk
  - he
license: other  # Public Domain
task_categories:
  - text-generation
  - fill-mask
  - summarization
tags:
  - polish
  - literature
  - public-domain
  - corpus
  - wolne-lektury
pretty_name: Wolne Lektury Polish Literature Corpus
size_categories:
  - 10M<n<100M
---

# Wolne Lektury Polish Literature Corpus

## Dataset Description

A comprehensive corpus of Polish literary works from [Wolne Lektury](https://wolnelektury.pl) — a free digital library of public domain literature. All texts are in the public domain.

The corpus was collected via the official REST API (`https://wolnelektury.pl/api/`), including full text of each work, metadata (author, epoch, genre, kind), and language information.

## Statistics

| Metric | Value |
|--------|-------|
| Records | 7,316 |
| Authors | 572 |
| Total characters | 319,880,903 |
| Total words | 48,164,947 |
| Estimated tokens (~1.3x words) | 62,614,431 |
| Languages | Polish (7,094), Lithuanian (79), German (54), English (47), French (27), Ukrainian (12), Hebrew (3) |

## Literary Coverage

- **Epochs**: Współczesność (2,507), Modernizm (1,190), Romantyzm (1,026), Dwudziestolecie międzywojenne (943), Pozytywizm (792), Renesans (495), Oświecenie (295), Barok (163), Starożytność (134), Średniowiecze (14)
- **Kinds**: Liryka (5,043), Epika (1,939), Dramat (336)
- **Top genres**: Wiersz (4,121), Bajka (417), Opowiadanie (393), Fraszka (316), Nowela (228), Powieść (198), Przypowieść (197), Pieśń (177), Dramat współczesny (173), Baśń (98)
- **Top authors**: Jan Kochanowski (453), Bolesław Leśmian (266), Maria Konopnicka (254), Ignacy Krasicki (223), K.I. Gałczyński (195), K.K. Baczyński (194), Stanisław Jachowicz (158), Adam Mickiewicz (149)

## Fields

| Field | Type | Description |
|-------|------|-------------|
| `id` | string | Slug identifier |
| `text` | string | Full text of the work |
| `title` | string | Title |
| `author` | string | Author(s), comma-separated |
| `translators` | list[string] | Translator(s) |
| `language` | string | Language code (pol, lit, ger, eng, fre, ukr, heb) |
| `epochs` | list[string] | Literary epoch(s) |
| `genres` | list[string] | Genre(s) |
| `kinds` | list[string] | Literary kind (Epika/Liryka/Dramat) |
| `char_count` | int | Character count |
| `word_count` | int | Word count |
| `url` | string | URL on wolnelektury.pl |
| `has_audio` | bool | Has audiobook available |

## Processing Pipeline

1. **Scraping**: Fetched book list from `GET /api/books/` (7,630 books listed)
2. **Metadata + text**: For each book, fetched `GET /api/books/{slug}/` for metadata and downloaded full text from `txt` URL
3. **Deduplication**: By ID and by text content (SHA256 hash of normalized text)
4. **PII redaction**: Phone numbers, emails, and PESEL numbers replaced with `[PHONE]`, `[EMAIL]`, `[PESEL]` placeholders (1,435 records affected)
5. **Short text filtering**: Texts with <10 words removed (0 removed — all texts are substantial)
6. **Decontamination**: N-gram overlap check against LLMzSzŁ, PoQuAD, and PES benchmark corpora — 0 contaminated records

## Quality Assessment

- **PII scan (post-redaction)**: Clean — 0 emails, 0 phones, 0 PESEL
- **Decontamination**: Clean — 0 contaminated records
- **Verdict**: Promising, ready for further evaluation

## License

All works are in the **Public Domain**. The dataset compilation is also freely usable.

## Source

- Website: [https://wolnelektury.pl](https://wolnelektury.pl)
- API: [https://wolnelektury.pl/api/](https://wolnelektury.pl/api/)