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All free summaries — page 410
47,382 public-domain books, summarised. Page 410 of 988.
Faery Lands of the South Seas
James Norman Hall
Where the vastness of the Pacific swallows the map, two travelers cast off the anchors of Western progress to record a world slipping quietly into memory.
Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World. Part 2
Mark Twain
A light-hearted American traveler traces the length of Australia by sea, rail, and carriage, marveling at its phosphorescent waters, strange wildlife, and booming frontier cities.
From the Indus to the Tigris
H. W. (Henry Walter) Bellew
Traversing dry plateaus, mountain passes, and desert wastes, an officer maps an arduous journey across the nineteenth-century borderlands of Central Asia, where ruined empires and modern imperial ambitions meet.
Golden Stories: A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers
Various
Strangers, lovers, rogues, and honorable men navigate sudden turns of fortune across a world bound by love, duty, and quiet ambition.
Half A Chance
Frederic Stewart Isham
A convicted man escapes a watery grave to rebuild his life in London society, only to find his past closing in as he falls for an aristocratic woman.
Harper's Round Table, November 12, 1895
Various
Two young brothers leap into a swollen river after a fishing rod, setting in motion a broad tableau of turn-of-the-century American youth.
Havoc
E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
A shadow-world of imperial secrets collides with the cold arithmetic of London high finance.
Heriot's Choice: A Tale
Rosa Nouchette Carey
A spinster steps into her widowed brother’s chaotic Westmorland vicarage to mend his broken family, only to find her own heart transformed by unexpected love.
High Life in New York: A series of letters to Mr. Zephariah Slick, Justice of the Peace, and Deacon of the church over to Weathersfield in the state of Connecticut
Ann S. (Ann Sophia) Stephens
A guileless Connecticut farm boy encounters the absurdities of nineteenth-century Manhattan, sending back a stream of observations to his hometown deacon.
How to Teach Phonics
Lida Myrtle Williams
By replacing rote memorization with systematic auditory and visual drills, early readers learn to independently translate written symbols into clear, spoken language.
In Clive's Command: A Story of the Fight for India
Herbert Strang
A young Shropshire boy runs away to sea, falls into the hands of a smooth-talking villain, and fights his way through the eighteenth-century conquest of India.
Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Robert Burns
Robert Burns
A man of humble origins transforms the dialect and spirit of his homeland into enduring verse, navigating the tensions between rural life, political turmoil, and the quiet dignity of the common person.
Letters To Eugenia
Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'
Stripping away divine fear reveals that virtue and happiness stem entirely from human reason and social duty.
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 098, February, 1876
Various
This mid-winter issue of a nineteenth-century literary journal captures the restless intellectual spirit of 1876. It surveys the global landscape through a lens of Victorian curiosity, scientific progress, and cultural commentary.
London in the Sixties (with a few digressions)
Unknown
The mid-Victorian underworld of late-night supper clubs, fixed horse races, and raucous pleasure gardens comes alive through the eyes of an uncompromising insider.
Love-Songs of Childhood
Eugene Field
A child's nocturnal imagination bridges the fragile gap between domestic warmth, wild outdoor play, and the inevitable, quiet march of growing up.
Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole: Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901
Gary N. (Gary Nathan) Calkins
A quiet revolution unfolds along twenty feet of wooden piling in Massachusetts, where microscopic predators and shimmering single-celled organisms spin through tidal waters in a delicate, invisible display of natural engineering.
Melmoth the Wanderer, Vol. 3
Charles Robert Maturin
A doomed traveler sells his soul for immortality, only to discover that unearthly life is an inescapable torment he can transfer solely by convincing another desperate heart to swap fates.
Mexican archæology
Thomas Athol Joyce
A rigorous survey synthesizes archaeological discoveries to track how pre-Spanish societies in Central America built cities, framed their heavens, and governed their daily lives.
Mother Goose for Grown Folks
A. D. T. (Adeline Dutton Train) Whitney
This witty volume of nineteenth-century social commentary reclaims classic nursery rhymes as sharp, surprisingly adult allegories. Through rhythmic verse, it dissects the foibles of modern life, marriage, ambition, and human nature.
My Lady of the North
Randall Parrish
A Confederate captain carrying vital dispatches through mountain passes finds his duty upended when a Union woman, trapped between warring armies, forces him to choose between military honor and an impossible love.
Obiter Dicta
Augustine Birrell
A quiet collection of critical essays turns an unhurried, witty eye on the art of reading, the absurdities of literary reputation, and the human quirks behind great writing.
Or Your Money Back
Randall Garrett
A small plastic box with no wires inside wins fortune after fortune at a Las Vegas roulette table, forcing a court to decide whether wishing hard for a number can be called a crime.
Philip Augustus
G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James
A king’s forbidden love tore France from the Church, setting knights, popes, and rival monarchs against each other in a fierce struggle for throne and soul.
Pieces People Ask For: Serious, Humorous, Pathetic, Patriotic, and Dramatic Selections in Prose and Poetry for Reading and Recitations
Unknown
Voices of tragedy, quiet devotion, comic misunderstanding, and civic fury echo across a sprawling canvas of late nineteenth-century performance culture.
Redmanship in Kentucky for Fifty Great Suns
Frank L. Smith
A dedicated fraternal history documents the survival, dissolution, and rebirth of a uniquely American order across fifty years of regional growth.
Robinetta
Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
An English heart hidden in a bright New England skin arrives on a cold Devonshire doorstep, looking for the warmth of family and finding only frozen decorum.
Rosa Mundi and Other Stories
Ethel M. (Ethel May) Dell
A young girl wanders down to a lonely coastal breakwater to escape a giant crab, only to interrupt a solitary novelist and spark a chain of secrets.
Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy
Frank R. Stockton
A wanderer through icy forests, subterranean ruins, and sky-high clouds discovers that the world is far larger and stranger than it appears at home.
Ryerson Memorial Volume: Prepared on the occasion of the unveiling of the Ryerson statute in the grounds of the Education department on the Queen's birthday, 1889
J. George (John George) Hodgins
Across Upper Canada’s wilderness, early schools were chaotic institutions of drafty log huts, mismatched texts, and untrained itinerant instructors. This volume captures how a single steadfast advocate transformed those disjointed local efforts into a unified, enduring public school system.
Scamping Tricks and Odd Knowledge Occasionally Practised upon Public Works
John Newman
This work serves as a candid, practical guide to the pervasive shortcuts, deceptions, and "extra" profit schemes occasionally employed by unscrupulous laborers and sub-contractors on 19th-century public infrastructure projects.
Science from an Easy Chair
Lankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
An engaging collection of popular science essays demystifies the natural world, bridging the gap between rigorous laboratory discovery and everyday human curiosity.
Set Down in Malice: A Book of Reminiscences
Gerald Cumberland
A candid observer moves through the literary salons, concert halls, and newsrooms of early twentieth-century Britain, measuring celebrated minds against their public reputations.
She Blows! And Sparm at That!
William John Hopkins
Young Tim leaves his home port to spend four years aboard a whaling vessel, growing into a seasoned seaman through the sheer discipline of high-seas survival.
Songs of the Sea and Lays of the Land
Charles Godfrey Leland
This collection of verse captures the vanishing spirit of the nineteenth-century sailor, blending authentic maritime folklore with the tall tales of a wandering adventurer. It preserves the salty, cynical, and superstitious voice of the men who once powered the world’s sailing ships.
Tarzan and the lost empire
Edgar Rice Burroughs
A legendary hero of the jungle ventures deep into the African interior to solve a mysterious disappearance, only to stumble upon a lost world of ancient Roman soldiers clinging to life in the wilderness.
Tennyson
G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
A pure lover of beauty found himself drafted into a bitter intellectual war, forced to trade the mirror of art for a musket in defense of human morality.
The Adventures of Puss in Boots, Jr
David Cory
A brave young cat puts on red-topped boots and sets out across a landscape of nursery rhymes to find his legendary father.
The American Reformed Cattle Doctor: Containing the necessary information for preserving the health and curing the diseases of oxen, cows, sheep, and swine, with a great variety of original recipes, and valuable information in reference to farm and dairy management
George H. Dadd
A practical guide to nineteenth-century livestock care champions gentle, botanical treatments over the harsh chemical purges and bloodletting common to early veterinary medicine.
The Beauties of the State of Washington: A Book for Tourists
Harry F. Giles
The grandest snowy peaks, dense evergreen forests, and endless waterways of the Pacific Northwest emerge as an interconnected haven for both industry and leisure.
The black wolf's breed
Harris Dickson
An orphaned officer leaves the wilderness of Louisiana for the glitter of Louis XIV's twilight court, only to find that the deadliest intrigue is written in his own forgotten bloodline.
The Booming of Acre Hill, and Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life
John Kendrick Bangs
Small-town pretension, marital friction, and social absurdity meet gentle satirical affection across fifteen vignette-like tales.
The Boy in the Bush
D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
A young Englishman sent to 1880s Western Australia rejects conventional respectability, surviving bush dangers and personal losses to forge a fierce, independent destiny on the frontier.
The Caves of Fear: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story
Harold L. (Harold Leland) Goodwin
High in the mountains of Asia, an ancient cave conceals a rare natural phenomenon—and a ruthless criminal network that will kill to keep it secret.
The Children of the Castle
Mrs. Molesworth
A high-cliff fortress, two lonely sisters, and a spoiled cousin discover that true vision requires a transformed heart.
The Court of Boyville
William Allen White
Where the town ends and the cornfields begin, boys rule a kingdom built on mud, pride, and ancient, unwritten laws.
The Dark Frigate
Charles Boardman Hawes
A boy raised on the high seas returns to seventeenth-century England, only to be swept back out to sea aboard a treacherous frigate where mutiny, murder, and piracy wait in the shadow of the sails.
The Diverting History of John Gilpin: Showing How He Went Farther Than He Intended, and Came Safe Home Again
William Cowper
A linen-draper’s anniversary outing collapses into chaotic, high-speed hilarity when a borrowed horse bolts across the English countryside, leaving a trail of broken wine bottles, lost wigs, and wildly mistaken onlookers in its wake.