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34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 57 of 714.
London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 1
Henry Mayhew
Beneath the commercial bustle of Victorian London lies an immense, self-contained society of street traders, hustlers, and impoverished laborers surviving at the razor edge of subsistence through sheer ingenuity and relentless daily struggle.
Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge
Pemberton Ginther
A young singer discovers the difficult path toward artistic maturity, navigating the pressures of ambition and social hierarchy while learning that true success requires more than just a beautiful voice.
The Lusiad
Luís de Camões
A sweeping epic of discovery, this work charts the legendary voyage of Vasco da Gama, blending the harsh realities of seafaring exploration with the majestic interference of the Olympian gods.
Friendship Village
Zona Gale
Friendship Village portrays a small town where neighbors are inextricably linked, finding deep meaning in the quiet, humble acts of service that hold their community together.
New Vegetarian Dishes
Mrs. Bowdich
Providing thoughtful alternatives to meat, this collection of original recipes seeks to elevate vegetarian dining beyond mere deprivation. It offers a practical guide for the late Victorian kitchen, emphasizing nourishment and palate-pleasing preparation.
The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines
George Husmann
The promise of a new, prosperous American landscape begins with the humble vine. This work serves as both a practical manual for the aspiring vintner and a patriotic vision for an emerging national industry.
Sound Military Decision
Naval War College (U.S.)
Success in the most critical of human endeavors rests not on sudden inspiration, but on the relentless application of disciplined, analytical thought to the chaos of the battlefield.
The Man in the Iron Mask
Alexandre Dumas
A secret royal twin sits locked in a damp stone dungeon while his brother wears the crown of France. When ambitious men scheme to trade the captive for the king, empires, friendships, and loyalties collapse.
Fibble, D.D
Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury) Cobb
The Rev. Roscoe Titmarsh Fibble, D.D., is a man whose earnest, unshakeable self-regard is matched only by his uncanny ability to attract catastrophe. He stumbles through life with the misplaced confidence of the perpetually oblivious.
Secret societies and subversive movements
Nesta Helen Webster
Behind major historical upheavals lies a centuries-old underground network dedicated to dismantling religious faith, traditional governance, and the foundational institutions of Western society through secret societies and organized subversion.
The Iliad
Homer
A proud king’s arrogance strips an elite warrior of his prize, triggering a devastating feud that nearly dooms the Greek forces at Troy.
Sons and Lovers
D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
Caught between a fiercely possessive mother and two vastly different lovers, a sensitive young man navigates art, intimacy, and grief in an English mining village, struggling to claim an independent soul before the darkness swallows him whole.
The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
A fierce critique of intellectual vanity exposes how rare genuine thought remains in a world obsessed with superficial chatter and immediate fame. True mastery demands independent vision, unyielding discipline, and complete indifference to contemporary approval.
Novum organum
Francis Bacon
A sweeping critique of human intellectual complacency lays out a disciplined framework for testing reality through systematically organized observation, experiment, and inductive reasoning.
Jessie Carlton: The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the
Daniel Wise
A bright young girl struggles against her own fickle impulses, learning that true character is built through small, persistent choices.
Patty's Social Season
Carolyn Wells
In 1910s New York society, a vibrant young debutante balances high-society balls, charitable schemes, and the affectionate rivalries of several swooning suitors.
The Christmas Story from David Harum
Edward Noyes Westcott
Generosity wears a rough coat in a small upstate town, where a sharp-witted banker turned horse-trader uses a quiet Christmas morning to settle an old score and rewrite a widow's desperate future.
Aesthetical Essays of Friedrich Schiller
Friedrich Schiller
A philosophical inquiry into art reveals that human freedom requires an aesthetic mediator to bridge the raw demands of physical nature and the strict laws of reason.
Latin for Beginners
Benjamin L. (Benjamin Leonard) D'Ooge
A clear, highly structured gateway to classical antiquity, this text transforms the daunting mechanics of Latin into a logical, step-by-step ladder for beginning students.
Little By Little
Oliver Optic
A working-class boy in a coastal Massachusetts town uses his nautical skill, steady nerves, and Christian principles to lift his family out of poverty.
Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (Volumes 1 and 2)
Songling Pu
Whispers of ghosts, foxes, and shape-shifters illuminate the hidden moral landscape and everyday passions of Qing Dynasty China.
Isis unveiled, Volume 1 (of 2), Science
H. P. (Helena Petrovna) Blavatsky
A bold nineteenth-century challenge to materialist orthodoxy claims that modern scientific discoveries merely retrace the forgotten spiritual sciences of ancient antiquity.
The Works of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
A dark, restless imagination transforms everyday anxieties into haunting visions of mortality, retribution, and cosmic decay.
Rollo at Work
Jacob Abbott
Early American children’s literature often paired narrative with direct moral instruction, using everyday domestic friction as a classroom for character formation.
Dorothy's Triumph
Evelyn Raymond
The music of a violin serves as the bridge between a young woman’s uncertain past and her future on the concert stage. Through persistent practice and the support of a devoted guardian, she discovers that her talent is not just a personal gift, but a means to secure the home she loves.
Mind and Motion and Monism
George John Romanes
A rigorous inquiry into human consciousness asks whether the inner world of thought and the physical motion of the brain are two sides of a single, unified reality.
The handbook of soap manufacture
W. H. (William Herbert) Simmons
A rigorous technical guide turns simple oils, tallows, and alkalis into precise industrial formulas. It bridges the gap between raw chemical theory and practical factory manufacturing.
The tale of Jolly Robin
Arthur Scott Bailey
A cheerful young bird learns to fly, navigate his neighbors, and navigate the world without ever losing his inclination to laugh.
The Poetical Works of John Milton
John Milton
A sweeping arc of spiritual warfare, human fragility, and divine reconciliation moves through intricate classic verse, mapping the fall of angels, the loss of Eden, and the quiet endurance of faith.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847
Various
A ambitious Scottish periodical scans the map of global empire, weighing the costs of expansion, the pull of poetry, and the strange mechanics of human behavior.
Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
Mark Twain
A famous frontier saga collapses under ruthless scrutiny, revealing how cherished literary classics can fail every test of basic logic and craft.
The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
When a disinherited teenager escapes a grim apprenticeship to perform in a traveling show, his journey across nineteenth-century America leads through circus rings, mining camps, and stolen legacies.
The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852
Various
A vibrant panorama of nineteenth-century thought and culture, this magazine captures a world in rapid transition—where art, science, and global politics meet the dramatic flourish of Victorian storytelling.
Fifty Famous Stories Retold
James Baldwin
A treasury of historic anecdotes, legendary exploits, and moral folk tales shapes foundational literacy through timeless cultural memory.
Othello
William Shakespeare
An intimate, devastating portrait of vulnerability weaponized, showing how easily an outsider’s noble self-image can be shattered when malice feeds his deepest insecurities.
The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries
W. Y. (Walter Yeeling) Evans-Wentz
Across six Celtic regions, belief in invisible beings is not a dying superstition, but a living, sophisticated animistic faith shared by scholars and peasants alike.
The Madness of May
Meredith Nicholson
A lighthearted Maytime romance leads an anxious young man out of panic and into a spring-born world of vagabond whimsy, hidden identities, and second chances.
Criminal Psychology: A Manual for Judges, Practitioners, and Students
Hans Gross
A cold, meticulous gaze turns toward the courtroom, stripping away legal abstractions to reveal the fallible human minds—misleading voices, deceptive hands, and flawed perceptions—that truly dictate the balance of justice.
The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays
W. B. (William Butler) Yeats
Visionaries, wanderers, and desperate scholars collide across three prose plays where spiritual awakenings shatter the quiet routine of rural Irish life.
Historic Tales: The Romance of Reality. Vol. 08 (of 15), Russian
Charles Morris
Centuries of bloody conflict, autocratic ambition, and popular struggle shape the vast expanse of a northern empire from its tribal origins to modern naval catastrophe.
Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete
Marietta Holley
A sharp-witted farm woman takes on church hypocrisy, domestic absurdities, and official debates to demand equal justice for women in both home and sanctuary.
The Life and Adventures of Nat Love: Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick"
Nat Love
Born into slavery, a young black man fights his way across the American frontier to become a legendary cattle puncher, gunfighter, and railroad porter, leaving behind a vivid personal record of the vanishing Wild West.
Peterkin
Mrs. Molesworth
An imaginative little boy mistakes an overheard parrot for an enchanted princess, triggering a runaway adventure through foggy London that tests his older brother’s sense of duty and brings a real child out of isolation.
Aunt Jane of Kentucky
Eliza Calvert Hall
An elderly woman sits on a quiet porch in rural Kentucky, sewing patchwork quilts and stringing together the vibrant, humorous, and heartbreaking memories of her vanished youth for a listening neighbor.
The Great Sioux Trail: A Story of Mountain and Plain
Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander) Altsheler
Stripped of its civil war past, the American frontier reveals a harsh wilderness where survival demands absolute courage and unlikely alliances.
The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887): Cooking, Toilet and Household Recipes, Menus, Dinner-Giving, Table Etiquette, Care of the Sick, Health Suggestions, Facts Worth Knowing, Etc., Etc
F. L. (Fanny Lemira) Gillette
A comprehensive guide to late-nineteenth-century American domestic life, this volume blends hotel-caliber culinary instruction with practical household management, invalid care, and social etiquette tailored to the expanding middle-class home.
Montaigne and Shakspere
J. M. (John Mackinnon) Robertson
A rigorous mind encounters a freer one, and literature changes forever. When William Shakespeare read John Florio's new translation of Michel de Montaigne's essays, the spark transformed Elizabethan drama into modern tragedy.
The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke'Gemni: The Oldest Books in the World
Ptahhotep
Ancient Egyptian wisdom maxims show how an honorable, disciplined life yields success. Across thousands of years, these timeless teachings reveal that managing your speech, treating others with courtesy, and practicing restraint build a lasting and respectable legacy.