Thousands of pages from one of the world's biggest collections of historic books, pamphlets and periodicals are to be made available on the internet.

The British Library has reached a deal with search engine Google about 250,000 texts dating back to the 18th Century.

It will allow readers to view, search and copy the out-of-copyright works at no charge on both the library and Google books websites.

The library gets more than a million visitors a year.

The works selected to be digitised date from between 1700 and 1870, and the project will take some years to complete, with Google covering the costs of digitising.

Among the first works to go online are a pamphlet about French Queen Marie Antoinette and Spanish inventor Narciso Monturiol's 1858 plans for one of the world's first submarines....