New York Public Library Brings Literary Classics to Instagram

You might not think to pick up a copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland from your local library. But the New York Public Library is willing to bet that if you can access it with the tap of your finger—on an app you probably already have open—you just might find yourself falling deep into the alternate universe dreamed up by Lewis Carroll in his beloved novel.

That’s part of the thinking behind Insta Novels, NYPL’s latest program to bring literary classics to the digital masses. As the name suggests, the library is taking advantage of the popularity and wide reach of Instagram by uploading literary classics in their entirety into the app’s Stories feature—essentially turning the library’s account into a digital bookshelf. The stories live on in the “Highlights” section on NYPL’s Instagram page, so they don’t disappear after 24 hours. The program launched Wednesday with part one of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Two other literary classics are queued up to be added over the next few weeks: the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and the novella The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.