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6,138 public-domain books, summarised. Page 112 of 128.

John Stuart Mill
Unknown
This collective biography captures the intellectual evolution of a Victorian polymath, illustrating how a rigorous, sheltered upbringing produced one of the nineteenth century’s most influential architects of modern political and social reform.

A Young Girl's Diary
Cedar Paul
An intimate, unvarnished record of adolescent awakening, this journal captures the inner life of a young Viennese girl navigating the fragile, often confusing transition from childhood to maturity. It remains a classic study of the developing self, preserved precisely as it was written.

All Around the Moon
Jules Verne
Three intrepid explorers launch themselves toward the lunar surface inside a hollow aluminum shell, embarking on a pioneering voyage that defies the known limits of terrestrial science.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Gyantse" to "Hallel": Volume 12, Slice 7
Various
The eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica remains a monumental achievement of the Edwardian era, capturing the sum of human knowledge at the sunset of the British Empire. This particular volume, covering "Gyantse" to "Hallel," serves as a dense, erudite snapshot of scientific, historical, and cultural…

Pariahs of Piperock
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
This Western tale follows two wandering prospectors who find themselves caught in the crossfire of a small-town election, proving that in the rugged West, peace and quiet are often the first casualties of a democratic vote.

The Middle-Class Gentleman
Molière
A wealthy merchant’s desperate, comical hunger to transform himself into a nobleman leads him into a web of elaborate pranks and social delusions.

The Witch, and Other Stories
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
The vast, indifferent Russian landscape frames these tales of quiet desperation, where ordinary people struggle to find meaning amidst the grinding monotony of poverty and the relentless passage of time.

Christian Science
Mark Twain
The spectacle of a new, sprawling religion is viewed with a skeptical, searching eye that balances sharp wit against the undeniable momentum of a modern movement.

Milton's Comus
John Milton
The darkness of the woods hides a dangerous tempter, but a pure heart finds a shield in its own virtue. This lyrical drama explores the triumph of temperance over the illusions of the senses.

The Kingdom of Georgia: Notes of travel in a land of women, wine, and song
John Oliver Wardrop
This account of an unexplored corner of the Russian Empire serves as both an evocative travelogue and a scholarly primer for a nation the author argues is unjustly neglected by the West.

The London Burial Grounds: Notes on Their History from the Earliest Times to the Present Day
Isabella M. Holmes
A sweeping historical survey of London’s sacred soil, this work chronicles the transition of the city’s many forgotten graveyards from sites of quiet interment into the essential public gardens of the Victorian era.

The Story of the Treasure Seekers: Being the Adventures of the Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune
E. (Edith) Nesbit
Finding a fortune requires imagination, a shovel, and a willingness to be misunderstood by the grown-up world. This story follows six siblings who embark on a series of elaborate, often misguided, quests to restore their family’s lost wealth.

U.S. Copyright Renewals, 1968 January - June
Library of Congress. Copyright Office
This volume captures the administrative heartbeat of a nation’s intellectual property, documenting the formal extension of protection for thousands of works during the first half of 1968. It serves as a comprehensive ledger of American literary and cultural output, preserving the legal lifelines that kept these…

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Cerargyrite" to "Charing Cross": Volume 5, Slice 7
Various
This volume offers a sprawling, precise window into a century of human knowledge, captured in the meticulous, detached prose of the early twentieth century. It serves as a static monument to an era when facts were gathered, categorized, and preserved with unwavering confidence.

English Translations from the Greek: A Bibliographical Survey
Finley Melville Kendall Foster
A comprehensive catalog of English-language renderings of ancient Greek literature, tracing the evolution of translation from the early days of the printing press through the onset of the First World War.

George Bernard Shaw
G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
This study explores the mind of a notoriously complex public figure, dissecting his philosophy, his work as a playwright, and his unique position in the intellectual landscape of his time. It serves as an intimate, if combative, portrait of a man who thrived on provocation.

Philosophical Works, v. 1 (of 4): Including All the Essays, and Exhibiting the More Important Alterations and Corrections in the Successive Editions Published by the Author
David Hume
Through a rigorous examination of human perception, memory, and the mechanics of belief, this work challenges the foundations of certainty, transforming the reader's understanding of the mind itself.

The mothercraft manual
Mary L. (Mary Lillian) Read
A comprehensive guide for the early twentieth-century parent, this text serves as a meticulous, scientifically grounded handbook for raising children from conception through school age. It bridges the gap between domestic intuition and structured, modern child-rearing.

The Unknown Masterpiece: 1845
Honoré de Balzac
The pursuit of perfection is a dangerous obsession, capable of turning genius into madness and art into an empty void. This haunting tale examines the thin, often invisible line between divine inspiration and the destruction of the soul.

All Things are Possible
Lev Shestov
HOOK To break free from the suffocating grip of logic and morality, one must dare to embrace the "groundless" and walk the dangerous, dizzying paths of the spirit alone.

The Bible: I. Authenticity II. Credibility III. Morality
John E. (John Eleazer) Remsburg
A dedicated freethinker systematically dismantles the foundational claims of the Christian Bible, arguing that the text is a product of human fallibility rather than divine inspiration.

The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 05 (of 12)
Edmund Burke
This collection of late-career writings presents a fierce, intellectual defense of traditional order against the encroaching tide of revolutionary upheaval. It captures a mind attempting to reconcile the endurance of the state with the volatile reality of a Europe fundamentally altered by the French Revolution.

Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters
Unknown
The world’s most magnificent ship met an iceberg on her maiden voyage, leaving behind a legacy of mourning, heroism, and a transformed understanding of maritime safety.

The Apple Dumpling and Other Stories for Young Boys and Girls
Aunt Fanny
A series of moral parables and domestic sketches, this collection captures the earnest, didactic spirit of Victorian childhood, where every spill and scrape serves as a gentle lesson in virtue.

The best short stories of 1922, and the yearbook of the American short story
Unknown
A curated glimpse into the American literary pulse of 1922, this collection archives the year’s most significant short fiction alongside a comprehensive index of the era’s storytelling landscape. It captures a fleeting moment when the magazine short story defined the national imagination.

The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean
R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne
The lure of the horizon is a powerful siren, and for three stranded boys, that call leads to a lush, wild laboratory where they must master the elements or perish.

The Forsyte saga, Volume 2 : Indian summer of a Forsyte
John Galsworthy
A portrait of a vanishing world, this chronicle traces the quiet, stubborn endurance of a family whose wealth and order cannot shield them from the inevitable erosion of time and the ache of human desire.

The Magic of Oz
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
A malicious ex-king and a wayward boy conspire to conquer a peaceful fairyland by transforming its inhabitants into beasts. Only a resourceful girl, a wizard, and a few magical companions can stop their dark plot.

The Pleasures of the Table: An Account of Gastronomy from Ancient Days to Present Times. With a History of Its Literature, Schools, and Most Distinguished Artists
George H. (George Herman) Ellwanger
Gasteria, the Tenth Muse, presides over this elegant survey of culinary history and the refined aesthetics of the dining table. It serves as an invitation to view eating not as a chore, but as a sophisticated cultural art.

A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln: Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History
John G. (John George) Nicolay
The arc of a singular American life is traced from the humble, ox-drawn wagons of a pioneer childhood to the heavy, historic burdens of the executive office during the nation's most profound rupture.

Architectural Antiquities of Normandy
Dawson Turner
Architectural Antiquities of Normandy serves as a detailed cartography of stone and history, tracing the roots of Norman influence from the village churches of Norfolk across the channel to the duchy’s most storied monuments. It captures the transition of European architecture through the lens of meticulous…

Childhood
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
A young boy awakens to the sensory details of his world, where the simple rhythms of domestic life shift irrevocably into the profound, quiet gravity of grief.

Selections from Ancient Irish Poetry
Kuno Meyer
This collection gathers the earliest lyrical voices of Ireland, preserving a fragile, intimate world of hermits, bards, and nature-lovers from the dawn of Western literature.

The Art of the Moving Picture
Vachel Lindsay
The moving picture is a modern hieroglyphic, a powerful new visual language that bridges the gap between mechanical art and the human soul. This foundational work treats the screen not as a mere novelty, but as a vast, untapped frontier for American civic and spiritual expression.

Thomas Dekker: Edited, with an introduction and notes by Ernest Rhys. Unexpurgated Edition
Thomas Dekker
These plays capture the vibrant, gritty soul of London through characters who navigate the precarious divide between soaring ambition and the crushing weight of social ruin.

George Eliot
Mathilde Blind
This biography traces the evolution of a provincial girl from Warwickshire into England’s most profound novelist, mapping the intellectual currents and intimate connections that shaped a singular literary life.

Historic Sites of Lancashire and Cheshire: A Wayfarer's Notes in the Palatine Counties, Historical, Legendary, Genealogical, and Descriptive
James Croston
A century of local lore and architectural history reveals the hidden legends of Lancashire and Cheshire, where ancient halls and churchyards hold the enduring echoes of the families who shaped them.

New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2: Who Began the War, and Why?
Various
This collection of contemporary speeches, manifestos, and official reports serves as a primary-source autopsy of the early months of the First World War. It preserves the immediate, irreconcilable narratives offered by the warring powers to justify their entry into a catastrophe that would reshape the modern world.

Pierre
Herman Melville
A young man’s crusade to rectify a secret family injustice leads him away from a privileged life into a labyrinth of moral ruin. It is a dense, feverish exploration of the peril of absolute virtue.

Raggedy Ann stories
Johnny Gruelle
A smiling, loose-jointed rag doll with shoe-button eyes leads a life of quiet adventure, teaching the other nursery toys the enduring power of kindness and love. This collection of linked stories brings to life a world where playthings are secretly sentient, observing the joys of their young mistress, Marcella, and…

The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki: Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919
Joel R. (Joel Roscoe) Moore
Soldiers of the 339th Infantry face a forgotten, freezing war in North Russia, fighting the Bolsheviks in a campaign that leaves a small army stranded in the Arctic while the rest of the world moves on.

The Pathfinder
James Fenimore Cooper
A seasoned frontiersman finds his stoic, solitary life upended when he falls in love with the daughter of a soldier, forcing a choice between his wilderness devotion and the prospect of a domestic future.

Academica
Marcus Tullius Cicero
The pursuit of absolute certainty remains an elusive human ambition, yet these dialogues suggest that the most honest position is often the courage to admit when knowledge falls short of proof.

Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Dorothy Wordsworth
The journals capture the quiet, rhythmic beauty of a life lived close to nature and the deep, intellectual pulse of a legendary creative partnership. These pages offer an intimate window into a world where poetry and daily survival are inextricably linked.

Judith of the Cumberlands
Alice MacGowan
Amid the rugged, isolated peaks of the Cumberland Mountains, a young woman’s awakening heart collides with the dangerous, insular traditions of an illicit distilling community. This story captures the friction between ancient mountain codes and the encroaching influence of the modern world.

The Acquisitive Society
R. H. (Richard Henry) Tawney
The industrial order is not an immutable law of nature, but a choice of priorities that can—and must—be redesigned to serve the common good rather than private gain.

The Rise of Silas Lapham
William Dean Howells
A self-made paint tycoon finds his hard-won fortune and social ambitions colliding with the rigid, old-money hierarchies of Boston, forcing a brutal reckoning with his own integrity.

Flower Fables
Louisa May Alcott
These enchanting tales weave together the lives of fairies, flowers, and insects to illustrate the transformative power of kindness, patience, and selfless love in a world of both beauty and suffering.