htmstrip (called somethink like htmst712.zip at Simtel) by Bruce
Gutherie converts html docs into FORMATTED plain text. That is,
it reproduced centered text, indented paragraphs, lists, etc. It
does quite a good job and has a variety of command line options.
viewht25.zip is a quick html viewer that also follows local hypertext
links.
elvis version 2 is a clone of the vi text editor that has been extended
to read text containing html markup, or Unix nroff, man-page like markup.
You can use it as a straight html reader, and/or save material as
formatted plain text. It also follows local links.
If html comes to you in MIME, multi-part messages -- as a MIME attachement,
you can add one of the above programs as the viewer for html type files.
If the html comes embedded in ordinary text with no clear markers, you
probably need to use the yarn pipe function to send the text through one
of the programs above.
In any case, there is no need to send html to a monster like lynx or
IE just to read it.