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11,874 public-domain books, summarised. Page 236 of 248.

Those Extraordinary Twins
Mark Twain
A strange, unruly experiment in fiction, this work documents the author’s attempt to untangle two conflicting stories that collided in his imagination: a farce about conjoined twins and a dark tragedy concerning switched identities.

To Herat and Cabul: A Story of the First Afghan War
G. A. (George Alfred) Henty
A young man’s daring survival through the First Afghan War captures the high stakes and historical gravity of a disastrous imperial conflict. It is an immersive account of duty, espionage, and the harrowing reality of total defeat.

With the British Legion: A Story of the Carlist Wars
G. A. (George Alfred) Henty
A young man leaves his home for the chaos of the Spanish Carlist Wars, finding that duty, swordplay, and personal honor demand more from him than any school-room lesson ever could.

Woman's Institute Library of Cookery. Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery
Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
This foundational guide transforms the kitchen into a laboratory of efficiency, teaching the home cook to master nutrition, fuel management, and the precise science of baking.

Aria da Capo
Edna St. Vincent Millay
A lighthearted harlequinade abruptly shifts into a haunting, circular tragedy about how easily human connection collapses into violence. This play exposes the fragility of peace and the terrifying speed at which casual games turn lethal.

Behind the Beyond, and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge
Stephen Leacock
This collection of sketches and parodies offers a sharp, witty lens into the absurdities of early 20th-century life, from the pretenses of high-society theater to the frustrations of modern commerce.

Boon, The Mind of the Race, The Wild Asses of the Devil, and The Last Trump;: Being a First Selection from the Literary Remains of George Boon, Appropriate to the Times
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
This satirical collage serves as a frantic, imaginative autopsy of the intellectual landscape during the First World War. It is a fragmented, meta-fictional experiment that blends literary criticism, dream-logic, and biting social commentary to examine how a society thinks, writes, and collapses under the weight of…

Casanova's Homecoming
Arthur Schnitzler
The aging libertine Giacomo Casanova, desperate to return from exile to his beloved Venice, finds his final years haunted by the agonizing collision between his fading virility and a younger generation’s cold, intellectual detachment.

Child Life in Prose
Unknown
Every child is a miracle of the All-working, carrying a spirit as vast as the history of humanity itself. This collection invites us to look closely at the small, fragile, and profound world of childhood.

Edward the Second
Christopher Marlowe
HOOK A king’s infatuation with a commoner ignites a firestorm of rebellion, betrayal, and regicide, exposing the fragile boundary between royal power and human vulnerability.

Immortal Memories
Clement King Shorter
A collection of spirited literary tributes and bibliophilic advice, these essays celebrate the enduring influence of great writers upon the modern mind.

Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope
This volume serves as a comprehensive bibliographic map to the vast, intricate fictional and historical landscape created by one of the nineteenth century’s most prolific and observant writers. It acts as a gateway to a world of manners, politics, and human frailty.

Indo-China and its primitive people
Henry Baudesson
A colonial officer chronicles the vanishing lifeways of the Moï and Cham peoples, capturing a vanishing era through the lens of early twentieth-century ethnology and personal observation.

John Pettie, R.A., H.R.S.A.: Sixteen examples in colour of the artist's work
Martin Hardie
This study captures the life and vivid, dramatic work of John Pettie, a nineteenth-century Scottish painter who rose from humble beginnings to become a celebrated master of color and historical narrative.

Naval songs and ballads
Unknown
These collected songs and ballads offer a visceral, unvarnished window into the lives, grievances, and fierce loyalties of British sailors from the seventeenth century through the Napoleonic era.

Pioneers of Evolution from Thales to Huxley: With an Intermediate Chapter on the Causes of Arrest of the Movement
Edward Clodd
This intellectual history traces the struggle for scientific truth, mapping the evolution of the idea of evolution from its ancient Ionian origins to its modern synthesis in the nineteenth century.

Sons of the Morning
Eden Phillpotts
The beauty of the moor is as vast as the human capacity for misunderstanding, and this story maps the wreckage left when two men and a woman lose their way in the fog of their own intentions.

Tales of the Covenanters
Ellen Emma Guthrie
The struggle for religious freedom in 17th-century Scotland unfolds through these evocative narratives, where the quiet faith of humble martyrs clashes against the iron-fisted authority of a state determined to crush dissent.

The Angel of the Revolution: A Tale of the Coming Terror
George Chetwynd Griffith
A brilliant, impoverished inventor crafts an invincible fleet of aerial warships, empowering a secretive revolutionary order to dismantle the corrupt empires of the old world and forcibly mandate global peace.

The Beginner's American History
D. H. (David Henry) Montgomery
This chronicle offers a concise, accessible survey of the foundational figures and pivotal milestones that shaped the American landscape. It provides a narrative bridge for those seeking a clear entry point into the nation’s complex past.

The Complete Poems of Sir John Davies. Volume 1 of 2
Davies, John, Sir
These verses capture the intellectual fervor of the Elizabethan era, blending philosophical rigor with a rare, crystalline grace that explores the nature of the soul and the harmony of the universe.

The doctor looks at biography
Joseph Collins
A discerning medical eye turns toward the literary record, examining how famous lives are captured, distorted, and understood through the pages of biography.

The doings of Raffles Haw
Arthur Conan Doyle
A mysterious, wealthy recluse settles in a quiet English village, wielding the power to manufacture gold and transform lives, yet finding that his boundless fortune brings only misery and moral corruption to those around him.

The Empire and the Papacy, 918-1273
T. F. (Thomas Frederick) Tout
The central drama of the Middle Ages unfolds through the collision between two universal powers, the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire, as they vie for supremacy over a rapidly changing Europe.

The Home Medical Library, Volume 5 (of 6)
Unknown
This comprehensive guide provides an authoritative snapshot of early 20th-century domestic science, offering practical advice on managing home health, sanitation, and environmental safety. It serves as a bridge between professional medical expertise and the daily requirements of a well-maintained household.

The Hopi Indians
Walter Hough
This study offers an intimate, observant window into the lives, rituals, and enduring traditions of the Hopi people as they navigated the transition toward modern American influence in the early twentieth century.

The humour of Ireland
Unknown
This collection offers a spirited, sprawling treasury of Irish wit, ranging from the absurdity of folk tales and ballads to the biting satire of nineteenth-century literature. It captures the distinct, resilient character of a nation defined by its language and its laughter.

The Notting Hill Mystery
Charles Felix
An investigator pieces together a trail of life insurance policies, mysterious illnesses, and cold-blooded manipulation to expose a predator operating under the guise of scientific enlightenment.

The Panama Canal: A history and description of the enterprise
J. Saxon (John Saxon) Mills
This historical account chronicles the engineering triumph of the Panama Canal, framing the monumental construction project as a decisive shift in global commerce and geopolitical power. It captures the transition from failed dreams to technological mastery at the dawn of the twentieth century.

The Runaway
Unknown
A young boy’s restless dream of adventure curdles into a nightmare of homelessness, crime, and incarceration. This sobering narrative serves as a stark warning to those who would trade the security of a loving home for the false promises of the wide world.

The Tale of a Field Hospital
Frederick Treves
War is often remembered through the lens of battlefield heroism, but this account focuses on the quiet, grim reality of the surgeons and nurses tasked with tending to the broken bodies left behind by the conflict.

The Virgin in Judgment
Eden Phillpotts
Against the rugged, ancient silence of Dartmoor, a quiet domestic tragedy unfolds as a devoted husband and his sister find their bond inadvertently pushing his wife toward a lonely, irreversible end.

A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses
K. Rangachari
The humble grass, often dismissed as mere background, is revealed here as the essential architect of the South Indian landscape and the silent partner to all agricultural prosperity.

A Plea for Captain John Brown: Read to the citizens of Concord, Massachusetts on Sunday evening, October thirtieth, eighteen fifty-nine
Henry David Thoreau
A fierce and urgent defense of a man branded a fanatic, this address demands that we weigh the moral courage of an individual against the hollow legality of a nation.

A Study of Poetry
Bliss Perry
Poetry is not merely the decoration of ideas, but the transformation of human experience into a rhythmic, resonant language that captures what we feel but cannot say. Understanding the mechanics of this transformation deepens our appreciation of the art itself.

Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War
Frederick Arthur Ambrose Talbot
This survey explores the rapid, violent transformation of aviation during the early years of the First World War. It provides a technical and tactical overview of how dirigibles and aeroplanes became essential, if unpredictable, instruments of modern combat.

Among the Farmyard People
Clara Dillingham Pierson
The farmyard is a bustling, hierarchical society where every creature, from the proud Peacock to the humble Mouse, learns that character is defined by how one treats a neighbor.

Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic
W. (William) Stebbing
This guide provides a rigorous distillation of an essential nineteenth-century inquiry into how we know what we know. It functions as both a map and a companion for navigating the complexities of structured reasoning.

Ancestors: A Novel
Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
A high-born Englishman seeking purpose in the American West meets a woman determined to carve her own path, their destinies colliding amid the flames of a city in collapse.

Animal Ghosts
Elliott O'Donnell
The silent, watchful gaze of a household pet may hold more than mere affection; it may be a bridge to an unseen world where the loyalties of the living persist long after death.

Cow-Country
B. M. Bower
This story follows an ambitious young man’s journey from a childhood of hardscrabble cattle-trailing to the independence of his own rugged life in the mountain West.

English Hours
Henry James
This collection of travel essays captures a vanishing England through the observant, wandering eye of a master of prose. It is a meditation on the beauty of the old world seen by a visitor who is perpetually caught between the role of a detached observer and a romantic pilgrim.

Essays Upon Heredity and Kindred Biological Problems: Authorised Translation
August Weismann
Evolutionary biology stands at a crossroads, where the transmission of life’s blueprint is finally uncoupled from the habits and scars of the individual.

Flagg's The Far West, 1836-1837, part 1
Edmund Flagg
An inquisitive traveler traverses the burgeoning frontier of the 1830s, documenting the raw beauty of the American prairies and the transient lives of those carving out new settlements in the vast Mississippi Valley.

Gipsy Life: Being an account of our Gipsies and their children, with suggestions for their improvement
George Smith
This work serves as a Victorian-era call to action, demanding that the British state bring the lives of Romany families under the mandatory influence of schools and sanitary inspectors. It is an impassioned, polemical argument that seeks to replace public indifference with legislative oversight.

Langley Memoir on Mechanical Flight, Parts I and II: Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, Volume 27 Number 3, Publication 1948, 1911
S. P. (Samuel Pierpont) Langley
Mechanical flight is a problem of physics, engineering, and sheer persistence, requiring the slow mastery of balance, power-to-weight ratios, and the unpredictable behavior of air. This record documents the arduous, decade-long transition from small, steam-powered model gliders to the ambitious development of a…

Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By the Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During the Years 1846-1850
John MacGillivray
A meticulous record of a mid-nineteenth-century survey expedition, this narrative balances the rigors of hydrographic charting with the wonder of documenting the natural world across the vast, then-mysterious reaches of the South Pacific.

Not George Washington
P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse
The young writer’s ambition to conquer London is a perilous game of masks, where the line between a carefully crafted persona and the man underneath dissolves into a dizzying, humorous struggle for survival.