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7,238 public-domain books, summarised. Page 145 of 151.
Ludwig the Second, King of Bavaria
Clara Tschudi
A youthful dream of absolute art and unbridled kingship unravels into isolation, political ruin, and eventual madness.
Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Year 1799-1804
Alexander von Humboldt
A single, rigorous eye turns the equatorial wilderness into a vast laboratory, mapping South America's uncharted waters, lost peaks, and living systems.
Self-Control, Its Kingship and Majesty
William George Jordan
Mastering our internal world requires recognizing that we are shaped less by external circumstances than by our own self-governance. True strength manifests when we claim full responsibility for our thoughts, actions, and character.
The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields
Gilbert Slater
The transformation of rural England through the systematic partition of communal lands permanently reshaped the nation’s social landscape, replacing shared agrarian traditions with private ownership and driving smallholders from the soil.
The Fortune of the Rougons
Émile Zola
A small Provincial town in Southern France becomes a blood-soaked arena as one scheming family leverages political upheaval to seize wealth and power.
The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5
Edmund Spenser
A vast landscape of human ambition and divine beauty crumbles into dust, leaving only song to preserve what time relentlessly destroys.
The Subterranean World
G. (Georg) Hartwig
Beneath our feet lies a world of terrifying force and immense treasure, where subterranean fires, deep caverns, and rich mineral seams shape human destiny.
The Three Devils: Luther's, Milton's, and Goethe's
David Masson
Three historical visions of evil reveal how humanity's moral imagination shifts from literal demons to majestic rebels and cold, modern cynics.
A history of criticism and literary taste in Europe, from the earliest texts to the present day. Volume 3 (of 3), Modern criticism
George Saintsbury
A rigorous journey across European literature reveals how the modern mind abandoned rigid, ancient formulas to judge art by the immediate, living joy it creates in the reader.
Chopin
James Huneker
A frail body contained a fierce, implacable soul whose quiet outward life belied the storm of psychological battle waging within his music. He transformed the piano into a canvas of chromatic ecstasy and tragic national memory.
Dreams
Henri Bergson
Dreams are not merely random artifacts of the sleeping mind; they are the result of a precise, energetic mental relaxation. By understanding the mechanism behind them, we uncover the hidden architecture of our own consciousness.
Memories and Portraits
Robert Louis Stevenson
A boy’s imagination takes root among northern rocks, stormy sea-lights, and quiet graveyards, eventually growing into a life devoted entirely to the craft of sentences and the enduring magic of written stories.
Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon
Robert Armitage Sterndale
A rich field companion to the wild beasts of South Asia blends systematic taxonomy with vivid hunting encounters and keen personal observations.
The heart of an orphan
Amanda Mathews Chase
An orphan’s written pleas to her memory of a settlement-house teacher open a doorway from a grim institution into a world of unexpected belonginess. Written as a series of letters from a fiercely loving young girl, this narrative traces the path from tenement poverty to the warm hearth of adoption.
The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I
Burton Jesse Hendrick
A young man raised in the post-Civil War South challenges his home state's intellectual paralysis, learns the craft of publishing, and ultimately finds himself representing American interests in London during the opening salvoes of the First World War.
The Play of Man
Karl Groos
Play is not merely a frivolous escape from the demands of reality, but a profound evolutionary mechanism that prepares us for the serious business of existence. This exploration examines how the urge to play shapes the human spirit from infancy through adulthood.
A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume 1 (of 2)
Johann Beckmann
A lifelong curiosity about how everyday things came to be reveals the hidden history of human ingenuity, turning simple tools and forgotten customs into windows on the past.
A Voyage to the Moon
Cyrano de Bergerac
A launch using vials of dew gives way to an extraordinary journey beyond the atmosphere, where an adventurous voyager discovers a surreal lunar civilization that mirrors, mocks, and utterly redefines every earthly certainty.
Common Sense
Thomas Paine
A fiery, unsparing plea for immediate American separation from British rule that strips monarchy of its ancient majesty and treats independence as a simple, urgent necessity.
Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
A brilliant, sharp-eyed intelligence tears through centuries of European history and literature, measuring celebrated statesmen, flawed philosophers, and bloated books against the unyielding standards of practical reason and clear writing.
Eminent literary and scientific men of Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Vol. 3 (of 3)
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Lives of classic Iberian and Italian authors and thinkers trace how creative minds navigate political chaos, exile, and public neglect.
Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty
George John Romanes
Human reason is not a sudden, mysterious creation separate from nature, but the gradual flowering of animal intelligence through the evolution of sign-making and language.
Searchlights on Health: The Science of Eugenics
B. G. (Benjamin Grant) Jefferis
Navigating the thresholds of personal conduct, physical vigor, and domestic duty, this manual outlines a disciplined path from youthful courtship to parental responsibility.
The Life of Benjamin Franklin, Illustrated by Tales, Sketches, and Anecdotes
Samuel G. (Samuel Griswold) Goodrich
A penniless printer’s apprentice uses quiet discipline, keen observation, and boundless curiosity to transform himself into an inventor, statesman, and international icon of the American Enlightenment.
The Princess and Curdie
George MacDonald
A miner's son, guided by a moon-weaving matriarch and a repulsive beast, journeys to a corrupt royal court to rescue a dying king.
U.S. Copyright Renewals, 1964 January - June
Library of Congress. Copyright Office
A meticulous, alphabetized registry maps the survival of American creative output across the first half of 1964. It records the quiet boundary line where private creation becomes public heritage, tracking every book, song, and play preserved by its creators.
Book of Etiquette, Volume II
Lillian Eichler Watson
Mastering the intricate web of early twentieth-century social expectations demands more than good intentions; it requires a disciplined understanding of silent codes, formal attire, and immaculate consideration for others.
Earth Features and Their Meaning: An Introduction to Geology for the Student and the General Reader
William Herbert Hobbs
The ground beneath our feet is not a static stage, but a dynamic canvas continuously sculpted by subterranean forces and atmospheric elements.
Home Occupations for Boys and Girls
B. (Bertha) Johnston
A practical handbook for parents turning household odds and ends into creative play, transforming everyday domestic life into a rich environment for childhood learning and imaginative growth.
How to Write Clearly: Rules and Exercises on English Composition
Edwin Abbott Abbott
Achieving absolute clarity in writing requires no rare stroke of genius, only the mechanical mastery of simple grammatical rules. By systematically arranging words and eliminating subtle ambiguities, any writer can make their exact meaning instantly transparent.
Poems by Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
A bold voice rises from the American landscape, offering a wide, radical vision of human equality, physical beauty, and democratic solidarity.
Sea Monsters Unmasked, and Sea Fables Explained
Henry Lee
For centuries, mysterious sightings of giant tentacles and snakelike ocean beasts fueled terrifying maritime legends. A Victorian naturalist strips away the folklore, demonstrating how real marine creatures inspired the world's most enduring sea monsters.
Sons and Lovers
D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
A miner’s son struggles to forge his own identity while caught between the suffocating devotion of his fierce mother and the contrasting loves of two very different women.
The Christian Year
John Keble
A quiet, reflective journey through the seasons reveals how nature, human sorrow, and daily devotion intersect to transform the ordinary heart.
The Gourmet's Guide to London
Lieut.-Col. (Nathaniel) Newnham-Davis
The Edwardian capital offers an endless feast, but navigating its dining rooms requires a guide who knows precisely where a gentleman may find a proper chop or an unblemished oyster.
The Path to Rome
Hilaire Belloc
A solitary vow made in a French country church launches a long walk south, across high passes and through sun-baked valleys, bound for the heart of the Christian world.
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Robert Browning
A quaint, rat-infested German town hires a strangely dressed musician to charm away its vermin, only to face catastrophic consequences when the local government breaks its word.
The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2
Henry James
An impoverished British woman and an orphaned American heiress are swept into a high-society web where love, financial desperation, and mortal illness dangerously collide.
Under Four Administrations, from Cleveland to Taft: Recollections of Oscar S. Straus
Oscar S. (Oscar Solomon) Straus
A dutiful public servant traverses four decades of American statecraft, charting the quiet triumphs of international arbitration, cabinet government, and human rights advocacy.
With Lawrence in Arabia
Lowell Thomas
Driven by deep cultural understanding rather than raw military force, a young British scholar helps unite fractured desert tribes to shatter Ottoman rule and reshape the modern Middle East.
Fairy Tales From All Nations
Anthony R. (Anthony Reubens) Montalba
A sweeping anthology gathers forgotten folklore from around the globe, revealing a world where enchanted beasts, cunning rogues, and resolute maidens test the boundaries of fate and human heart.
Gilian The Dreamer: His Fancy, His Love and Adventure
Neil Munro
A sensitive youth in the Scottish Highlands trades reality for imagination, only to watch the tangible world and the girl he loves slip through his fingers.
Island Nights' Entertainments
Robert Louis Stevenson
Three tales of the South Seas weave trade, sorcery, and love into a sharp exploration of human greed and moral temptation.
Miscellanies
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When the soul sheds its reliance on tradition, it awakens to a direct, original relationship with the universe, transforming every ordinary fact of daily existence into a doorway to divine truth.
Model Speeches for Practise
Grenville Kleiser
A thoughtful study of public address reveals how spoken words shape national identity, rally fractured communities, and give voice to timeless human ideals.
Old Christmas: from the Sketch Book of Washington Irving
Washington Irving
A solitary traveler finds an inviting haven of ancestral holiday customs and warm fireside hospitality in the English countryside.
Surgical Instruments in Greek and Roman Times
John Stewart Milne
To understand the ancient world, one must look at the tools of its healers; this study systematically maps the surgical hardware that defined Greek and Roman medicine. By piecing together archaeological finds and classical texts, it reconstructs a lost medical reality.
The gods of Mexico
Lewis Spence
A terrifying stone Earth-mother, towering with claws and fangs, reveals the profound symbolic depths of ancient Mexican belief.