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6,138 public-domain books, summarised. Page 111 of 128.

The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing: A Manual of Ready Reference
Joseph Triemens
This manual serves as a snapshot of American life in 1910, blending practical instruction with the era’s peculiar preoccupations, superstitions, and marketplace curiosities. It is an artifact of a time when information was gathered from a single, chaotic source.

The Tailor of Gloucester
Beatrix Potter
A poverty-stricken tailor becomes entangled with a community of secret, industrious mice while racing to finish a mayor's wedding coat before Christmas. This gentle, atmospheric tale celebrates the quiet magic of kindness and the spirit of the season.

Woman under socialism
August Bebel
This historical manifesto argues that the liberation of women is inextricably linked to the abolition of private property and the transformation of the state into a socialist collective.

Anthologica Rarissima: The Way of a Virgin: Being excerpts from rare, curious and diverting books
Unknown
A collection of forgotten literary curiosities, this volume recovers intimate, often ribald, historical perspectives on human desire, compiled for those who value the unvarnished records of the past over the sanitizing instincts of modern taste.
Coningsby
Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield
Young adulthood is a battlefield where ancestral legacy meets the urgent, unwritten demands of a changing nation. This narrative explores the awakening of a political consciousness, tracing the journey of a refined protagonist as he navigates the hollow grandeur of aristocratic society to find his own truth.

Conundrums, Riddles and Puzzles: Containing one thousand of the latest and best conundrums, gathered from every conceivable source, and comprising many that are entirely new and original
Dean Rivers
Whether as a parlor pastime or a solitary exercise in mental agility, this collection gathers one thousand puzzles, riddles, and conundrums intended to stimulate the wit and entertain the social circle.

Heroes of the Middle West: The French
Mary Hartwell Catherwood
HOOK This narrative traces the bold French explorers and missionaries who braved the vast, silent Mississippi River Valley to claim a new world for their king.

One Hundred Proofs That the Earth Is Not a Globe
William Carpenter
The Earth is a vast, stationary plane, and the modern belief in a spinning globe is a sophisticated delusion maintained by academic consensus rather than empirical evidence. This assertive polemic catalogs one hundred distinct arguments challenging the prevailing astronomical model of the nineteenth century.

Pictographs of the North American Indians. A preliminary paper: Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1882-83, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1886, pages 3-256
Garrick Mallery
Deep within the silent stone carvings and painted hides of North American indigenous history lies a complex system of communication that predates and informs the written word. This foundational study decodes the visual language of the continent’s first peoples.

Robert Louis Stevenson reader
Robert Louis Stevenson
This collection of poetry and prose acts as a gentle, intimate biography of a celebrated writer’s early life, framing his imaginative play as the foundational source of his later creative work. It invites readers to step into the world of a sickly but spirited child who transforms a nursery or a sickbed into a vast…

Self-instructor in the art of hair work, dressing hair, making curls, switches, braids, and hair jewelry of every description
Mark Campbell
This manual serves as an exhaustive, step-by-step masterclass in the Victorian-era craft of manufacturing intricate jewelry and personal ornamentation from human hair. It remains a singular, essential record of a once-thriving, specialized industry.

The range-boomer
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
A mysterious drifter arrives at a struggling ranch just as a train robbery casts suspicion on the family. He must clear his name and theirs while navigating a web of hidden betrayal and frontier justice.

Youth
Isaac Asimov
Two boys discover small, intelligent aliens who have crash-landed in their barn, leading to a profound misunderstanding where both sides view the other as dangerous and primitive monsters.

Ancient legends, Mystic Charms & Superstitions of Ireland: With sketches of the Irish past
Lady Wilde
The veil between the ordinary world and the realm of the spirit is thin in Ireland, where ancient enchantments still linger in the stones, the wells, and the very air. This collection gathers the echoes of a vanishing culture, preserving the myths, superstitions, and historic memories that once defined the Irish…

Charley's Museum: A Story for Young People
Unknown
Natural curiosity finds a home in this earnest chronicle of a boy’s transition from simple play to disciplined, lifelong learning. It serves as a gentle testament to the joy of structured discovery and the quiet influence of mentors.

'Gainst the might of Spain
Percy F. (Percy Francis) Westerman
Caught in the crossfire of the Anglo-Spanish wars, a young man battles both the brutality of the Inquisition and the legendary might of the Great Armada.

Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern
Unknown
A grand, curated survey of humanity’s greatest written works, this collection bridges the ancient and modern worlds to preserve the heartbeat of global literary history.

Massacres of the South (1551-1815): Celebrated Crimes
Alexandre Dumas
This chronicle maps two and a half centuries of cyclical sectarian violence, documenting how religious and political fervor repeatedly transformed the South of France into a landscape of vengeance and ruin.

The Holy Roman Empire
Bryce, James Bryce, Viscount
The Holy Roman Empire survives as a ghost in the architecture of modern Europe, an ancient and contradictory institution that defined the Middle Ages. Its long, slow dissolution reveals how a singular dream of universal order shaped the laws and nations we recognize today.

Essays on Russian Novelists
William Lyon Phelps
Russian literature stands as a giant recently awakened, offering the world a profound intellectual depth that far outweighs the fleeting victories of war or industry. This collection of essays serves as a dedicated guide to the titans of the Russian spirit, exploring how a nation with a history spanning centuries…

Freckles
Gene Stratton-Porter
A disfigured, orphaned laborer finds purpose and belonging in the deep woods, where his protection of a wild sanctuary leads to a life-changing encounter with a young woman known as the Swamp Angel.

The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
In this expansive philosophical poem, a meditative journey through the English mountains serves as a vessel for exploring the deepest questions of human grief, endurance, and the consoling power of nature.

Tono-Bungay
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
A young man navigates the hollow illusions of modern commerce and the social ladder, ultimately finding that the only reality worth pursuing is the austere, relentless truth of science.

Adventures and Enthusiasms
E. V. (Edward Verrall) Lucas
The world is filled with small, overlooked wonders, and these essays invite the reader to pause, observe, and find the quiet pulse of life in the ordinary. It is a collection that rewards the curious mind.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Jevons, Stanley" to "Joint": Volume 15, Slice 4
Various
This volume serves as a dense, scholarly repository of Victorian-era knowledge, mapping the human experience from the artistic intricacies of ancient jewelry to the complex legal definitions of joint property. It functions as a comprehensive bridge between the classical past, historical records, and the…

How and When to Be Your Own Doctor
Steve Solomon
A self-reliant guide to reclaiming health through diet and rest, arguing that the body possesses an innate, often misunderstood capacity to heal itself. This manual provides a practical framework for taking charge of your own physiological well-being.

On the Edge of the Arctic
H. L. (Harry Lincoln) Sayler
Two young aviators are hired by a mysterious oil prospector to navigate the treacherous, frozen Canadian wilderness in their custom-built monoplane.

The Story of an African Farm
Olive Schreiner
A stark, deeply felt examination of isolation and the search for purpose, this narrative unfolds on the arid plains of a South African farm, where three young lives collide with the crushing realities of tradition and time.

The Student's Companion to Latin Authors
George Middleton
This guide serves as an essential, high-level map to the canon of Roman literature, offering a methodical survey of the poets, playwrights, orators, and historians who defined an empire’s intellectual identity.

Dark power
Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
A young woman finds herself trapped in a web of family malice and inherited greed, forced to rely on her own quiet courage to survive a nightmare of manipulation.

England, Picturesque and Descriptive: A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel
Joel Cook
England offers a tapestry of ancient stone and verdant landscapes, serving as both a physical destination for the traveller and a spiritual homecoming for those bound to it by history and language.

John Rawn, Prominent Citizen
Emerson Hough
The rise of a ruthless industrialist collides with the shifting tides of American society, revealing the hollow core of unchecked ambition. This is a study of power, greed, and the human cost of a life measured solely by acquisition.

The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
Arthur Conan Doyle
A dense London fog obscures a dangerous theft of national secrets, forcing an unlikely investigator to pursue a killer through the city's subterranean tunnels.

The Last Days of Pompeii
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
Beneath the shadow of a restless mountain, the vanity of a doomed city plays out in a desperate race against time, fire, and the crushing weight of history.

The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Translated into English Prose: Virata Parva
Kisari Mohan Ganguli
The exiled heroes must navigate a perilous thirteenth year in disguise, living among their enemies without revealing their true identities to survive.

Cicero: Letters to Atticus, Vol. 2 of 3
Marcus Tullius Cicero
The Roman Republic collapses in real time through the frantic, private correspondence of its greatest orator, capturing the intimate terror of a statesman watching his world dissolve into civil war.

Dickens' London
M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
London is a city of shadows, soot, and sudden, vivid life, captured here through the landmarks that anchored the imagination of its most celebrated literary son. This volume acts as a topographical map for the reader who wishes to walk the streets as they appeared to a novelist who found beauty in the most…

Eight Cousins
Louisa May Alcott
When a frail, orphaned girl is placed under the care of an eccentric uncle, she discovers that true health and happiness are found not in parlor manners, but in the rough-and-tumble joy of an unconventional family.

Indian Tales
Rudyard Kipling
This collection of short stories captures the raw, sun-baked life of British soldiers and colonial subjects in India, where the boundary between duty and madness is as thin as the heat haze.

Mark Twain: A Biography. Volume I, Part 2: 1866-1875
Albert Bigelow Paine
A restless spirit turns his sharp eye toward the world, transforming the raw material of a wandering life into the foundation of a lasting American legend.

Pompeii, Its Life and Art
August Mau
An authoritative yet accessible survey, this volume reconstructs the daily life and physical environment of the Roman city destroyed by Vesuvius, grounding its findings in the meticulous analysis of ruins, inscriptions, and art.

The Junior Classics, Volume 6: Old-Fashioned Tales
Unknown
The imagination of youth finds its home in these pages, where the ordinary world is constantly eclipsed by the impossible, the humorous, and the deeply kind. It is a collection that prizes wonder above all else.

Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
This comprehensive collection gathers the vast literary output of a towering 19th-century figure, encompassing his celebrated novels, impassioned political writings, expansive poetry, and intimate journals. It serves as a definitive roadmap for navigating the diverse landscapes of a mind that shaped the conscience…

Les Misérables, v. 3/5: Marius
Victor Hugo
A young man’s quiet, poverty-stricken existence in Paris is shattered when he discovers a violent criminal conspiracy unfolding through a hole in his bedroom wall.

The Economist, Volume 1, No. 3
Various
This early periodical serves as a rigorous, intellectual ledger of the mid-nineteenth-century push for free trade, capturing the urgency of a nation grappling with the transition from protectionist monopolies to a global, market-driven economy.

The gift of friendship
Unknown
The profound, often quiet, and frequently demanding nature of human connection is explored here through the eyes of history’s most thoughtful observers. These reflections offer a rare map for the heart’s most sacred territory.

A vindication of the rights of men, in a letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke
Mary Wollstonecraft
This impassioned retort dismantles the arguments of a famous statesman, fiercely defending the French Revolution and the inherent, natural rights of all humanity against the stifling weight of tradition and hereditary privilege.

Dante. An essay. To which is added a translation of De Monarchia
Dante Alighieri
This volume offers a dual perspective on a towering figure of Western literature: a discerning biographical essay followed by a translation of a seminal political treatise. It provides a rare, grounded look at how one of history’s greatest poets grappled with the fractured power structures of his time.