With the permission of The MIT Press, I have posted online copies of two classic LISP books on the History of Lisp website at the Computer History Museum:
- John McCarthy, Paul W. Abrahams, Daniel J. Edwards, Timothy P. Hart and Michael I. Levin. LISP 1.5 Programmer’s Manual. The M.I.T. Press, 1962, second edition. PDF
- Berkeley and Bobrow, editors. The Programming Language LISP: Its Operation and Applications. Information International, Inc., March 1964 and The MIT Press, April 1966. PDF
In addition to these I have continued to track down information about more versions of LISP, so the web site keeps growing.
I also gave a brief announcement of this project at the recent International Lisp Conference 2005, and a number of people volunteered to help me track down more information.
If I’ve neglected your favorite version of LISP, please go through your closet or basement and find those manuals, listings, mag tapes, etc.
[Edited 10 May 2014: community.computerhistory.org/scc => www.softwarepreservation.org, etc.]