>>> from urllib import request
>>> url = "http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2554/2554-0.txt"
>>> response = request.urlopen(url)
>>> raw = response.read().decode('utf8')
>>> type(raw)
<class 'str'>
>>> len(raw)
1176893
>>> raw[:75]
'The Project Gutenberg EBook of Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
'