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8,211 public-domain books, summarised. Page 161 of 172.
A Text-Book of Astronomy
George C. (George Cary) Comstock
The heavens serve as a laboratory where simple tools and steady eyes reveal the fundamental architecture of the universe. This guide invites the student to move beyond passive observation into an active, measured understanding of the solar system and the stars.
A Witch Shall Be Born
Robert E. (Robert Ervin) Howard
A warrior betrayed and left to die upon a cross returns to exact a brutal, calculated vengeance against the usurper who stole a queen’s throne.
Brave Men and Women: Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs
Osgood E. (Osgood Eaton) Fuller
Finding the courage to meet life’s inevitable hardships is the common thread connecting the varied, storied lives gathered here. True character is forged not in ease, but through the crucible of struggle and the grace of persistence.
Famous funny fellows
William Montgomery Clemens
This collection offers a rare, candid glimpse into the late nineteenth-century American landscape of newspaper humor, charting the lives of the figures who defined a burgeoning genre of wit. It serves as a vital historical record of the era’s literary culture.
Field's Chromatography: or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists
George Field
Beyond the visible spectrum of color lies the chemical reality of the artist’s palette, where time and substance collide in a precarious dance. This technical treatise strips away the romance of painting to reveal the volatile, material truth of the pigments upon which every masterpiece depends.
Letters of Edward FitzGerald, in Two Volumes. Vol. 2
Edward FitzGerald
A quiet life in the Suffolk countryside yields a wealth of observation, as a reclusive scholar finds the world—and his lost friends—reflected in the pages of the books he keeps near.
The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms: With Observations on Their Habits
Charles Darwin
The humble earthworm, long dismissed as a lowly creature, emerges in these pages as the primary architect of the fertile soil that sustains all terrestrial life. Through patient, decades-long observation, the hidden work of these creatures is revealed to be a geological force of immense consequence.
The Voyages of Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, 1595 to 1606. Volume 1
Pedro Fernandes de Queirós
This record captures the obsession of a visionary navigator seeking a fabled southern continent. It documents the collision of high-minded religious idealism with the harsh, often violent realities of seventeenth-century maritime exploration.
A History of Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Georges Perrot
The genius of the Nile, etched in stone and cast in bronze, remains the singular testament of a civilization that viewed art as a timeless bridge between the living and the eternal. This comprehensive survey explores the enduring mechanics and aesthetic philosophy of ancient Egyptian craftsmanship.
A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries: And of the Discovery of Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa, 1858-1864
David Livingstone
This narrative documents a landmark Victorian expedition to East Africa, blending geographical discovery with a sobering, firsthand investigation into the human cost of the inland slave trade.
Arrowsmith
Sinclair Lewis
A relentless, searching portrait of a man torn between the integrity of scientific discovery and the crushing demands of professional ambition, social climbing, and personal loss.
John Deere's Steel Plow
Edward C. Kendall
A blacksmith’s ingenuity transformed the stubborn, sticky soil of the American prairie into the heart of a nation’s farmland. This historical inquiry examines how a simple tool fundamentally reshaped agricultural productivity.
Lawrence and the Arabs
Robert Graves
A brilliant, restless intelligence navigates the shifting sands of the First World War, forging an improbable Arab insurgency against the Ottoman Empire while struggling against the encroaching myth of his own identity.
Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2
John Wilson
The voice of a solitary, contemplative wanderer echoes through the glens and highlands of Scotland, inviting readers to witness the beauty of a landscape and the enduring spirit of its people.
The Beginnings of Poetry
Francis Barton Gummere
Rhythmic speech, born from the collective labor and play of the earliest human groups, serves as the true foundation of all poetic art.
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
A queen’s survival hangs on a single thread of storytelling, weaving a tapestry of magic, moral lessons, and human caprice that spans a thousand and one nights of suspense. This legendary collection serves as both a mirror of medieval Eastern life and a labyrinthine gateway into the timeless imagination of the Orient.
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 08: Negligible Tales, On With the Dance, Epigrams
Ambrose Bierce
This collection offers a bracing, acidic tonic for the sentimental, stripping away the thin veneer of Victorian morality to reveal the machinery of human folly beneath. It is a masterful anatomy of cynicism that finds the dark humor in everything from domestic murder to the absurdity of war.
The Defence of Duffer's Drift
E. D. (Ernest Dunlop) Swinton
A young officer tasked with guarding a river crossing experiences a series of vivid, recurring nightmares, each revealing the lethal consequences of his tactical failures until he finally masters the art of survival.
The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844: Volume 23, Number 6
Various
This June 1844 installment of a long-running literary journal serves as a vibrant, kaleidoscopic window into the intellectual and social life of the mid-nineteenth century, blending serious narrative with the spirited, often biting, commentary of its era.
The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D
Jonathan Swift
A fictional, plain-speaking tradesman takes on the might of the British Empire to protect his country’s economy from a fraudulent coinage scheme.
The Sorceress of Rome
Nathan Gallizier
Amid the decay and corruption of tenth-century Rome, a young, idealistic emperor and a beautiful, manipulative noblewoman collide in a tragic struggle for power and affection.
Traditions of the Tinguian: a Study in Philippine Folk-Lore
Fay-Cooper Cole
HOOK This collection gathers the traditional myths and explanatory legends of the Tinguian people of Luzon, preserving a vibrant, magical world where the boundaries between human, spirit, and animal constantly dissolve.
A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa
Robert Louis Stevenson
A chronicle of imperial overreach and cultural collision, this work documents the turbulent eight-year struggle for power in Samoa as three global superpowers vied for control of a Pacific kingdom.
A history of Italian literature
Richard Garnett
This is a survey of the literary evolution of Italy, tracing its growth from medieval roots through the height of the Renaissance and into the shifting landscape of the nineteenth century. It frames the nation's creative output as a single, enduring spirit.
A Little Book of Filipino Riddles
Unknown
The riddle serves as a universal mirror, capturing the wit of a culture through the simple, playful act of describing the world without naming it. This collection preserves a fleeting oral tradition that transforms the mundane—pigs, stars, tools, and fruit—into objects of mystery.
Christianity and Ethics: A Handbook of Christian Ethics
Archibald B. D. (Archibald Browning Drysdale) Alexander
This intellectual inquiry explores how ancient Christian teachings inform the moral life, arguing that true freedom and character are found through a dedicated, loving submission to the spirit of Christ.
History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I: Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times
Gustavus Myers
The vast American fortunes are not the singular products of thrift and industry, but the logical, inevitable results of a social system built to despoil the many for the benefit of a few.
In Ghostly Japan
Lafcadio Hearn
A collection of literary sketches and folklore, this work captures the haunting intersection of Buddhist philosophy and the supernatural in late nineteenth-century Japan. It serves as a bridge between the fading traditions of the Edo period and the encroaching modernity of the Meiji era.
Ireland: The People's History of Ireland, Volume 1 (of 2)
John F. (John Frederick) Finerty
This chronicle weaves the long, turbulent narrative of the Irish people, tracing their journey from ancient, pre-Christian origins through the religious and political upheavals of the Reformation and the Jacobite wars.
Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile
Herman Melville
A soldier of the American Revolution survives a half-century of exile, only to return home and find his existence erased by time and neglect.
Patrick Henry
Moses Coit Tyler
Patrick Henry stands as a singular, galvanizing force in the American Revolution, a man whose voice became the clarion call for a nation’s independence and the conscience of its nascent government. This study recovers the authentic historical record of the orator’s life, stripping away the hazy myths that long…
Survey of London, Volume 05 (of 14), the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, part 2
George Laurence Gomme
This meticulously documented volume chronicles the architectural evolution and historical lineage of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, transforming dry land records into a vivid tapestry of London’s past. It is an essential reference for those who find the history of a city written in its street plans, doorways, and…
The Best Ghost Stories
Unknown
We are all, perhaps, as full of superstition as we are of secrets; we only require the right story to set those hidden shadows loose.
The Cat of Bubastes: A Tale of Ancient Egypt
G. A. (George Alfred) Henty
A prince of a fallen nation and an Egyptian priest’s son forge an unlikely friendship that survives exile, pursuit, and the shadow of a sacred execution.
The Dead Secret: A Novel
Wilkie Collins
A long-held domestic secret threatens to shatter a young woman’s identity, forcing a desperate, generation-spanning search for the truth hidden within the walls of a remote Cornish estate.
The Dramatic Works of G. E. Lessing: Miss Sara Sampson, Philotas, Emilia Galotti, Nathan the Wise
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
These plays explore the volatile intersection of private desire and public moral duty, challenging the rigid social hierarchies of their time with startling, often tragic, directness.
The Green Fairy Book
Unknown
Fairy tales offer a window into universal human longings, where courage and kindness often prove more powerful than any spell.
The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4, July, 1851
Various
This mid-century periodical functions as a sophisticated literary and cultural archive, offering a window into the intellectual preoccupations, artistic trends, and global political currents of July 1851. It captures the rapid expansion of a world increasingly connected by steam and ink.
The Nibelungenlied: Revised Edition
William Nanson Lettsom
This epic poem chronicles the rise and ruin of a heroic age, where loyalty to one’s kin and king inevitably collides with the demands of personal honor, leading to an inescapable cycle of vengeance.
The Poetry of Architecture
John Ruskin
Architecture is a conversation between the hand of man and the character of the earth. By grounding design in local climate, national temperament, and the contours of the landscape, the built environment achieves a poetic unity.
U.S. Copyright Renewals, 1953 July - December
Library of Congress. Copyright Office
This registry preserves the administrative pulse of American letters, cataloging the formal extension of legal protections for a vast array of mid-century creative works.
Diary in America, Series One
Frederick Marryat
A seasoned traveler ventures across the Atlantic to decode the complex, contradictory character of a young republic. These observations provide an unvarnished, often sharp-tongued portrait of American life in the late 1830s.
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary Part 2: More Ghost Stories
M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
The boundaries between the mundane and the malevolent are dangerously thin, particularly for the curious scholar or the careless collector of antiquities. These tales explore the quiet terror that erupts when the past refuses to stay buried.
Men of Invention and Industry
Samuel Smiles
Behind the great machines and industrial triumphs of history lie the grit, failures, and persistent labor of individuals who often lacked formal recognition. This collection of biographies reveals the human heartbeat within the gears of progress.
Rossa's Recollections, 1838 to 1898: Childhood, boyhood, manhood
Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa
A staunch revolutionary reflects on a life forged in the furnace of Irish struggle, charting a path from the desperate poverty of the Great Famine to the front lines of the Fenian movement.
The castles and abbeys of England
William Beattie
These pages traverse the crumbling stone of England’s most storied fortresses and cloisters, weaving together the heavy silence of ruins with the clamor of the chronicles that once filled them.
The Circular Staircase
Mary Roberts Rinehart
HOOK A sensible, middle-aged spinster trades city comforts for a country estate, only to find herself trapped in a labyrinth of lethal secrets and midnight prowlers.
The New Forest: Its History and Its Scenery
John R. (John Richard) Wise
The New Forest holds a singular place in the English landscape, a rare expanse of ancient woodland and open heath that serves as a living archive of history, folklore, and natural wonder.