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47,382 public-domain books, summarised. Page 138 of 988.
The Mesnevi
Maulana Jalal al-Din Rumi
This profound collection of spiritual teachings and parables serves as a foundational pillar of Sufi literature, using vivid allegories to guide the seeker toward the inner light of the divine.
The Monster Men
Edgar Rice Burroughs
A man is created in a lab, possessing a human soul but burdened by a monstrous origin. He must survive a savage wilderness to win the heart of the woman he loves.
The Poet's Poet
Elizabeth Atkins
The poet’s own words serve as our best guide to understanding the mysterious, often contradictory identity of the creative soul throughout the last century and a half.
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 01 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Lectures
Robert Green Ingersoll
This collection gathers the fiery, articulate arguments of a nineteenth-century orator who championed reason, science, and the absolute liberty of the human mind. It serves as a manifesto for the secular age.
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 18
Robert Louis Stevenson
A traveler traverses the vast Pacific, documenting the fading traditions of remote islanders and the encroaching influence of colonial powers in a world caught between ancient custom and modern wreckage.
A Book of Remarkable Criminals
H. B. (Henry Brodribb) Irving
Driven by dark passions and cold calculation, these portraits explore the intersection of motive and action in the lives of history’s most notorious offenders.
A Tale of a Tub
Jonathan Swift
A labyrinthine satire on human folly, this work dissects the pretensions of religion, philosophy, and literature through a chaotic blend of allegory and intellectual mischief. It remains a foundational masterpiece of ironic prose.
Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House), Retold from the Japanese Originals: Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2)
James S. (James Seguin) De Benneville
HOOK This atmospheric chronicle explores the eerie, lingering legacy of a haunted Edo estate, weaving together the lives of historical figures and the restless spirits of the Tokugawa era.
Historic Tales: The Romance of Reality. Vol. 07 (of 15), Spanish
Charles Morris
This chronicle traces the turbulent evolution of Spain from the mythical age of King Wamba to the decisive naval battles of 1898, capturing the relentless spirit of a nation defined by its conquests and its losses.
Man in the Iron Mask (an Essay)
Alexandre Dumas
A captive whose features were never seen, but whose existence haunted the corridors of power, remains the ultimate symbol of arbitrary, unreachable tyranny. No single key unlocks this cell, yet the mystery itself endures.
Social Life in the Insect World
Jean-Henri Fabre
This collection of observations brings the hidden dramas of the insect world to life, revealing a landscape of bizarre rituals, brutal survival, and surprising sophistication beneath our feet.
The Art of Letters
Robert Lynd
Literature is a conversation that transcends the grave, and these reflections serve as a bridge between the reader and the giants of the English tradition. Here, the pursuit of letters is treated not as a dry academic exercise, but as a living, breathing, and often messy human endeavor.
The Invisible Censor
Francis Hackett
A collection of incisive, restless observations that cut through the polite veneers of early twentieth-century American life to expose the uncomfortable truths underneath.
Time Enough at Last
Lyn Venable
HOOK After a nuclear apocalypse leaves him the last survivor in a ruined city, a bookish man finally finds the solitude he has always craved—only to have his own fragility betray him at the moment of triumph.
Turkish Literature
Epiphanius Wilson
This volume offers an evocative, scholarly doorway into the Ottoman literary imagination, bridging the gap between historical tradition and the Western reader through a curated collection of fables, courtly poetry, and narrative folklore.
Crises in the History of the Papacy: A study of twenty famous popes whose careers and whose influence were important in the development of the church and in the history of the world
Joseph McCabe
The papacy stands as an institution of unrivaled longevity and influence, a subject whose historical weight often obscures the individual men who occupied the throne of St. Peter. This volume examines twenty pivotal figures, tracing how their personal ambitions, moral failures, and administrative strategies shaped…
Great short stories, Volume 2 (of 3)
Unknown
The veil between the living and the dead wears thin in these haunting chronicles, where the past refuses to stay buried and every shadow hides a secret waiting to be told.
Quotes and Images From The Works of George Meredith
George Meredith
A lover must have his delusions, just as a man must have a skin. This collection gathers the sharp, bracing observations of a Victorian master who found the human comedy written in the wrinkles of our social pretenses.
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 06 of 12)
James George Frazer
The ancient rituals of death and rebirth reveal the deep, shared anxieties of humanity across time. This investigation maps the mythic landscapes where human fate and the fertility of the earth are inextricably bound.
The Hidden Power, and Other Papers upon Mental Science
T. (Thomas) Troward
The universe is not a collection of external forces to be feared, but a living, responsive intelligence waiting for the individual to recognize their own inherent capacity to direct it.
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 06 (of 12)
Edmund Burke
The state, at its best, is a moral organism defined by duty, tradition, and the fragile balance of human rights. Through a series of urgent letters and public addresses, the architect of this collection argues that political power is a trust, not a possession.
Three Plays
Luigi Pirandello
The masks we wear to survive are often more real than the people beneath them. These three plays dismantle the safety of certainty, revealing that truth is a mirror shattered by the very act of looking.
Twenty Years of My Life
Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen
A life defined by the pursuit of literature and the art of hospitality, this memoir captures the shifting tides of the late Victorian and Edwardian literary world through the eyes of a dedicated connector of people.
An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America
J. P. (John Patterson) MacLean
Thousands of displaced Scots sought a new life in the American wilderness, only to find themselves caught in the gears of a revolution they neither invited nor understood.
Celebrated Travels and Travellers, Part 3.: The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century
Jules Verne
The nineteenth century represents a breathless era of global mapping, where the final blank spots on the world’s atlas vanish under the persistent scrutiny of explorers. This exhaustive chronicle captures the sheer scale of that ambition, documenting the mapping of continents, the navigation of treacherous polar…
Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies: or Man of Pleasure's Kalendar for the Year, 1788
Anonymous
This guide serves as a candid, irreverent directory of London’s eighteenth-century demimonde, cataloging the city’s working women with a blend of tactical appraisal, anatomical detail, and poetic flourish.
History of Religion: A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems
Allan Menzies
Religion is a universal human phenomenon, shaped by the slow evolution of social bonds and moral ideals from the earliest tribal roots to the complex, world-spanning systems of faith that define modern civilization.
Jerusalem Delivered
Torquato Tasso
A sweeping epic of faith, war, and enchanted desire, this Renaissance masterpiece follows the Crusaders as they strive to reclaim the Holy City through blood, valor, and the intervention of the supernatural.
The Grey Woman and other Tales
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Through tales of domestic peril and urban struggle, these narratives capture the quiet, persistent courage of women navigating worlds that often treat them as property or afterthoughts.
The Personal Life of David Livingstone: Chiefly from his Unpublished Journals and Correspondence in the Possession of His Family
William Garden Blaikie
A relentless explorer and devout missionary, David Livingstone spent his life mapping the African interior, determined to combat the slave trade and open the continent to the world.
The Rivers of Great Britain, Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial: Rivers of the East Coast
Various
The rivers of Great Britain are the arteries of its history, and this sweeping survey maps the life—both pastoral and industrial—that thrives along the banks of its most storied eastern waterways.
We of the Never-Never
Jeannie Gunn
HOOK This is a vivid, autobiographical account of a city-bred woman’s year living in the heart of the Australian Northern Territory, where harsh wilderness and human warmth collide.
Your Mind and How to Use It: A Manual of Practical Psychology
William Walker Atkinson
Mental efficiency is not an innate gift but a skill that can be developed through the systematic training of one’s own cognitive faculties.
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Honoré de Balzac
Lucien de Rubempré arrives in Paris with grand poetic ambitions, only to discover that the literary world is a ruthless marketplace where integrity is the first casualty of survival.
Blazing the Way
Emily Inez Denny
The pioneer experience in the Pacific Northwest was a rugged process of clearing forests, building homes, and navigating a rapidly shifting landscape. This collection captures the quiet, persistent labor of those who first transformed a wilderness into a home.
Chronicle and Romance: Froissart, Malory, Holinshed: (The Harvard Classics Series)
Unknown
This volume gathers three foundational pillars of the English literary and historical consciousness: the sweeping, martial accounts of the Hundred Years’ War, the mystical quest for the Holy Grail, and a vivid, panoramic portrait of Elizabethan domestic life. It is a collection that bridges the divide between the…
Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan
Izumi Shikibu
A shimmering, ephemeral collection of records, these classical Japanese texts capture the interior lives and refined sensibilities of noblewomen navigating the constraints and aesthetic passions of the Heian-era imperial court.
Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O
Unknown
These collected addresses represent the formal, oratorical culture of the turn of the twentieth century, capturing the wit, gravity, and civic idealism of an era that treated public speaking as a high art.
New, Old, and Forgotten Remedies: Papers by Many Writers
Unknown
This collection of medical papers serves as a curated archive of late 19th-century homeopathic inquiry, gathering diverse reports on both obscure and established botanical, mineral, and animal-based remedies.
Races and Peoples: Lectures on the Science of Ethnography
Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison) Brinton
Ethnography serves as a vital key to history, mapping the complex relationships of human migration, culture, and physical adaptation across the globe.
The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Volume 2 of 2)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
A celebrated poet navigates the turbulent currents of mid-nineteenth-century European politics, spiritualism, and motherhood, all while maintaining a vibrant, searching correspondence with the intellectual titans of her age.
The Life of John Taylor: Third President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
B. H. (Brigham Henry) Roberts
A leader’s life is defined by the convictions he holds and the trials he endures. This chronicle traces the path of a man who chose principle over safety in the face of widespread public hostility.
The Standard Cantatas: Their Stories, Their Music, and Their Composers: A Handbook
George P. (George Putnam) Upton
A practical guide for the nineteenth-century concertgoer, this handbook demystifies the complex world of the cantata by tracing the history, narratives, and musical structures of the most significant works of the era.
The Wrecker
Robert Louis Stevenson
HOOK A whirlwind tale of financial ruin, Pacific shipwrecks, and the desperate, morally fraying pursuit of a phantom fortune. It is a sprawling, globe-trotting mystery that tests the limits of friendship and the integrity of a man’s soul.
A Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, with a Sketch of Josephine, Empress of the French
Ida M. (Ida Minerva) Tarbell
This narrative presents a human-centered portrait of the French Emperor and his consort, tracing their rise from obscurity to the height of European power. It captures the complex interplay between personal character and historical destiny.
Don Carlos: A Play
Friedrich Schiller
A prince trapped between the iron walls of his father’s court and the desperate, forbidden love he harbors for his stepmother struggles to find a path toward freedom and political purpose.
Dramatic Romances
Robert Browning
This collection of verse captures the interior lives of men and women caught at the height of their passions, turning the historical past into a mirror for the human heart. It is a masterful study of human motivation, rendered with a keen ear for the rhythm of thought and the urgency of the moment.
England in the Days of Old
William Andrews
History reveals itself not in grand political maneuvers, but in the intimate, often peculiar habits of daily life that define a nation’s character. These pages offer a vibrant, episodic survey of the customs, superstitions, and social rituals that shaped the English experience across the centuries.