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All free summaries — page 347
47,382 public-domain books, summarised. Page 347 of 988.
Sidelights on Chinese Life
J. (John) Macgowan
An intimate, observant gaze behind the walls of Qing-dynasty homes reveals a culture powered by intense human connection, infinite patience, and quietly ironclad social tradition.
Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy
Andrew Lang
A quiet war of words over old Scottish songs turns into a defense of literary honor, historical truth, and the shadowy line between editing and forgery.
Spanish America, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Bonnycastle, Richard Henry, Sir
Ancient empires, mountain chains, and tropical waterways unfold across a sweeping geographical survey of Spain’s sprawling American possessions. Written on the eve of Latin American independence, this compendium captures a continent in transition.
Spinster of This Parish
W. B. (William Babington) Maxwell
A respectable Victorian daughter defies social convention to follow the magnetic explorer she loves, enduring decades of quiet ostracism and private devotion.
State of the Union Addresses
George Washington
A nascent republic struggles to transform revolutionary ideals into permanent administrative structures while maintaining balance on a precarious global stage.
Stories of Childhood
Unknown
To step across the threshold of childhood is to enter a world where joy and heartbreak are inextricably linked. These classic tales capture the tender resilience, quiet wonder, and tragic vulnerabilities of youth with unsparing emotional clarity.
Success (Second Edition)
Beaverbrook, Max Aitken, Baron
Ambition requires more than energy; it demands a disciplined mind, balanced living, and the courage to adapt when circumstances shift.
Swimming scientifically taught
Frank Eugen Dalton
This practical manual demystifies the art of swimming through a clear, step-by-step method designed to transform anyone into a confident and graceful swimmer. It serves as both a foundational guide for the novice and an advanced technical reference for the enthusiast.
Tarka the otter
Henry Williamson
A young otter faces the wild currents of North Devon's rivers, hunting to survive while pursued by a merciless pack of hounds.
The Adventures of Dick Maitland: A Tale of Unknown Africa
Harry Collingwood
When poverty threatens his family, a young London apprentice sets off for Africa to make his fortune and finds himself exploring lands far beyond the reach of British maps.
The Americans in the Great War
Unknown
Massive artillery concentrations, devastated landscapes, and tactical counter-offensives shape a definitive record of the Allied turn of fortune along the Marne in 1918.
The Apology of the Augsburg Confession
Philipp Melanchthon
Conscience under religious law burns with terrifying uncertainty, for human virtue can never fully quiet a soul that suspects its best efforts fall short of divine perfection.
The Autobiography of Methuselah
John Kendrick Bangs
An aging patriarch chisels his memories onto stone slabs, transforming ancient biblical history into a parade of absurd modern domestic complaints.
The Banshee
Elliott O'Donnell
A chilling shadow glides over ancient Irish estates, bringing a soft, heart-wrenching dirge or a blood-curdling shriek to herald imminent death.
The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV
Unknown
A quiet light burns behind the dark wool of a boy’s coat, hidden from a cold sea wind.
The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, December 1883
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
A structured monthly magazine functions as a portable university for home readers, blending rigorous academic instruction with cultural commentary and community news.
The cock, the mouse, and the little red hen
Félicité Lefèvre
A clever little bird rescues her grumbling, lazy companions from the jaws of a predator using only her wits and a sewing kit. This timeless fable offers a sharp, satisfying lesson on the rewards of industry.
The Corner House Girls in a Play: How they rehearsed, how they acted, and what the play brought in
Grace Brooks Hill
Four sisters in small-town New England pool their wits, good nature, and theatrical talents to keep a beloved children's hospital from shuttering its doors.
The Dead Letter: An American Romance
Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
An unread letter sitting in the dead-letter office exposes the shadow of a horrific crime, pulling a young clerk and an intuitive investigator into a web of greed, jealousy, and betrayal.
The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay
Fanny Burney
Disformed by revolution, exiled by war, and quieted by domestic devotion, a celebrated English novelist records how public history continually shatters and reshapes private happiness.
The Duchess of Wrexe, Her Decline and Death
Hugh Walpole
Behind a grand facade in late-Victorian London, a formidable matriarch rules an aristocratic clan whose rigid authority is quietly beginning to fracture.
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Numbers
Robert A. (Robert Alexander) Watson
A deep, thoughtful journey through ancient desert sands reveals how human struggle and divine order forge a nation’s soul.
The Freelands
John Galsworthy
A quiet Worcestershire field hides a deep, bitter struggle over English soil and human freedom.
The Frontiersmen
Charles Egbert Craddock
A vast, contested wilderness tests the mettle of British settlers, French opportunists, and Cherokee nations, as personal rivalries and political intrigue shape the early American frontier.
The Great Book-Collectors
Charles Isaac Elton
Across centuries of quiet passion and fierce rivalry, the story of human learning turns on those who gathered, guarded, and sometimes perished for the parchment books they loved.
The Gypsy's Parson: his experiences and adventures
Hall, George, rector of Ruckland, Lincolnshire
A countryside clergyman wanders along the grassy verges of Victorian and Edwardian England, entering tents and caravans to record the speech, customs, and living memory of a vanishing nomadic culture.
The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush
Francis Lynde
In a corrupt Western state ruled by machine politics and corporate influence, a young reformer returns home only to find that his primary political adversary is his own father.
The Lady of the Mount
Frederic Stewart Isham
A proud young nobleman driven into exile and outlawry must choose between bloody revenge against his oppressor and the dangerous love he harbors for the enemy's daughter.
The Motor Boys Across the Plains
Clarence Young
Three teenage chums and an eccentric naturalist pilot an early automobile across the rugged American West, braving bad men, wild animals, and missing mine titles.
The New Revelation
Arthur Conan Doyle
Prompted by the horrors of the First World War, an earnest investigator turns to spiritualism to find undeniable proof that human consciousness survives physical death, offering a grief-stricken world a rational foundation for religious hope.
The Northern Iron
George A. Birmingham
A sea-carved cavern in County Antrim shelters a fugitive rebel, while on the cliffs above, an aristocrat's aunt matches wits with a royal officer to steal him away to sea.
The Vicar of Wrexhill
Frances Milton Trollope
A grieving widow hands the keys to her family estate—and the hearts of her daughters—to an ambitious evangelical vicar who turns a peaceful English village into a battlefield of self-righteousness, deceit, and ruin.
The works of Thomas Middleton, Volume 3 (of 5)
Thomas Dekker
A father in disguise watches his reformed daughter struggle against debt, while a courtier duel sets off an unyielding clash of honour.
The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know
Thomas Forsyth Hunt
Success on the land requires far more than sweat and ambition; it demands capital, calculated organization, and a rigorous scientific understanding of the living world.
Thoughts upon the African slave trade
John Newton
A former slave-ship captain turned Anglican minister lays bare the horror, moral ruin, and systemic cruelty of the trans-Atlantic slave trade from his own eyewitness memory.
Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean: From Authentic Accounts Of Modern Voyagers And Travellers
Marmaduke Park
Raging billows, fiery shipwrecks, and razor-toothed sea monsters collide in a classic anthology that captures the raw peril and untamed wonder of nineteenth-century oceanic adventure.
Two old faiths
J. Murray (John Murray) Mitchell
Two nineteenth-century Christian scholars conduct a detailed, rigorous investigation into the origins, evolution, and social impacts of Hinduism and Islam.
Up and Down
E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
A sun-drenched sanctuary in Italy gives way to the grey shadows of wartime England as two friends confront love, mortality, and the enduring pull of the human spirit.
Vain Fortune: A Novel
George Moore
A desperate playwright, a penniless ward, and a wealthy widow tangle in a quiet English country house where ambition and desire turn fatally inward.
War in the Garden of Eden
Kermit Roosevelt
An Allied officer navigates heat, desert skirmishes, and ancient ruins in Mesopotamia before joining the drive across France to the occupied Rhine.
Weatherby's Inning: A Story of College Life and Baseball
Ralph Henry Barbour
Accused of cowardice when a drownings threatens, a fragile college freshman must brave social ostracism to redeem his reputation on the diamond.
Won in the ninth
Christy Mathewson
A rookie pitcher leaves his sun-soaked home to carve out a place on a frosty Northern campus, discovering that mastering a deadly curveball is only half as difficult as navigating college honor, fast friends, and stolen trust.
Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy
Charles Major
A young prince journeys across Europe incognito, only to fall in love with a sharp-witted burgher girl who harbors a royal secret of her own.
A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro
Alfred Russel Wallace
A young naturalist embarks on a four-year odyssey into the heart of the Amazon, only to see his life’s work consumed by fire on the voyage home.
A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 02
Unknown
These early dramatic works dramatize the eternal struggle between virtue and vice, inviting the audience to witness the soul's precarious journey toward salvation through allegory and moral instruction.
Armenia and the War
A. P. (Avetoon Pesak) Hacobian
This urgent plea for justice serves as a searing historical record of the Armenian Genocide, written while the Great War still raged to demand accountability from the international community.
As We Were Saying
Charles Dudley Warner
These essays offer a witty, observant tour of late-nineteenth-century American manners, capturing the frantic pace of a society struggling to reconcile its democratic ideals with an increasingly decorative, performative, and complex social life.
Birds and All Nature, Vol. 6, No. 4, November 1899: In Natural Colors
Various
This collection serves as a Victorian-era bridge between the parlor and the wild, offering a curated glimpse into the natural history of the late 19th century. It invites readers to observe the world with the curiosity of a naturalist and the sentiment of a storyteller.