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4,129 public-domain books, summarised. Page 76 of 87.

Sex & Character: Authorised Translation from the Sixth German Edition
Otto Weininger
Driven by a tragic sense of intellectual urgency, this work attempts to categorize all humanity into a rigid system of sexual types. It serves as a stark artifact of early twentieth-century Viennese thought and existential crisis.

Fifteen sonnets of Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca
HOOK The sonnet is a tiny vessel built for immense feeling, and these fifteen poems capture the eternal, shifting light of a love that long ago turned to shadow and memory.

Favorite Fairy Tales
Unknown
HOOK These timeless stories of wonder, peril, and transformation capture the essential moral landscape of childhood, where magic acts as both a dangerous force and a path to justice.

The New Gresham Encyclopedia. A to Amide: Vol. 1 Part 1
Various
This expansive reference work captures the intellectual landscape of the early twentieth century, offering a window into the definitions, geography, and technological advancements understood in 1922. It serves as a comprehensive snapshot of a world transitioning into the modern era.

Symbolism, its meaning and effect
Alfred North Whitehead
Human perception is not a simple recording of facts, but a complex, fallible, and essential process of interpreting symbols. We navigate the world by constantly translating between raw experience and the meanings we assign to it.

Highways and Byways in Surrey
Eric Parker
This evocative guide explores the hidden corners and quiet lanes of Surrey, tracing the history of a county caught between the expansion of London and the enduring character of its rural landscapes.

Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Gilbert K. Chesterton
G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
This collection serves as a comprehensive gateway to the vast, diverse literary output of a prolific early twentieth-century intellectual. It gathers his novels, essays, social critiques, and verse into one accessible guide.

Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Jack London
Jack London
This expansive index represents the complete breadth of a prolific literary career, capturing the raw intensity of the Klondike, the brutality of the high seas, and the volatile social struggles of the turn of the century. It serves as a comprehensive map of a body of work that defined American naturalism.

Tales from Dickens
Charles Dickens
These curated selections serve as a gateway to the vast, teeming world of Victorian literature, distilling complex narratives into accessible, episodic accounts. By threading together the emotional centers of major novels, the work offers a panoramic view of an author’s enduring fascination with human resilience…

The Emperor Marcus Aurelius
John C. (John Chrisentia) Joy
A meditative examination of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, this work probes the tension between the Stoic's internal pursuit of virtue and the external collapse of an empire.

The Pleasures of Life
Lubbock, John, Sir
The secret to a contented life lies not in changing the world around us, but in cultivating the mind to appreciate the simple, intellectual, and natural wonders already within our reach.

How to keep bees
Anna Botsford Comstock
This practical handbook serves as a steady, encouraging guide for the amateur apiarist, blending technical instruction with a deep appreciation for the social complexity of the honeybee.

The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886: Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886
Various
A mosaic of New England life, this periodical captures the transition of a region tethered to its colonial roots while racing toward the industrial and social complexities of the late nineteenth century.

The Soul of Man under Socialism
Oscar Wilde
The individual soul is a flower that can only bloom in the light of absolute freedom, far from the stifling weight of poverty and the soul-crushing demands of altruism.

The Tragedies of Seneca: Translated into English Verse, to Which Have Been Appended Comparative Analyses of the Corresponding Greek and Roman Plays, and a Mythological Index
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The only complete, surviving examples of Roman tragedy, these intense plays offer a direct, visceral link to the ancient world. They represent a bridge from the Greeks to the Elizabethans, blending philosophical inquiry with the macabre.

The Door in the Wall, and Other Stories
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
These narratives explore the thin, permeable veil between the mundane world and the terrifying or transcendent sublime. They map the quiet desperation of individuals haunted by glimpses of a reality they can never fully reclaim.

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843
Various
This August 1843 issue offers a panoramic window into the Victorian mind, blending scholarly literary criticism, biting political commentary, and serialized fiction into a singular, sprawling mosaic of the era’s intellectual life.

Tudor and Stuart Love Songs
Unknown
This collection captures the golden age of English lyric verse, gathering the voices of poets who turned the experience of desire into refined, musical art. It serves as a bridge to a time when wit and longing were inseparable.

Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited?: An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin
W. P. (William Platt) Ball
Does the exercise of a muscle or the practice of a craft during a lifetime leave a permanent mark on the bloodline? This rigorous examination challenges the long-held assumption that acquired habits and physical modifications are passed to the next generation.

The Reign of Tiberius, Out of the First Six Annals of Tacitus;: With His Account of Germany, and Life of Agricola
Cornelius Tacitus
A haunting study of power’s corruption, this collection captures the steady erosion of Roman liberty under the shadow of its first emperors and the resilience of those living in its wake.

Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
To navigate the complexities of human existence, one must look inward, embracing the contradictions of the self and the inevitability of death with a cheerful, skeptical, and profoundly honest spirit.

The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles
Jean-Henri Fabre
A patient observer finds that the most profound mysteries of existence are often hidden within the humble labor of insects inhabiting a neglected field.

The Officer's Manual: Napoleon's Maxims of War
Emperor of the French Napoleon I
Command is a heavy burden, and victory is rarely a matter of luck. These collected insights into the art of war provide a foundational guide for those who seek to master the deliberate, cold-blooded science of command.

The Honourable Mr. Tawnish
Jeffery Farnol
A dandy of delicate manners masks a resolute spirit to win the woman he loves, confounding the hardened, brawling squires who dismiss him as a mere fop.

The Magna Carta
Anonymous
Born from the friction between an embattled monarch and his defiant nobility, this foundational document outlines the essential rights and legal constraints that would eventually shape the course of modern governance.

Unwise Child
Randall Garrett
This taut, clever piece of mid-century science fiction follows an unconventional engineer drafted into a high-stakes mission to secure an unstable, world-altering artificial intelligence. It is a brisk, dialogue-driven mystery that explores the collision of human fallibility and machine logic.

Lives of the Engineers: The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson
Samuel Smiles
This is a portrait of the pioneers who shrank the globe, turning the industrial grit of the nineteenth century into the iron arteries of modern travel.

A History of French Literature: Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II
Edward Dowden
The soul of a nation’s letters is not found in a mere catalog of titles, but in the unfolding drama of its changing thought. This volume traces that evolution from medieval courtly verses to the modern democratic spirit.

The Ambassadors
Henry James
A middle-aged man travels to Europe to retrieve a young friend from a decadent life, only to find that his own rigid worldview is the thing truly in need of rescue.

Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth
Henry Lovejoy Ambler
This technical manual serves as an essential guide for the nineteenth-century practitioner, arguing that tin foil remains a superior, life-saving material for dental restorations. It offers a practical defense of a humble, often overlooked metal.

A guide book of art, architecture, and historic interests in Pennsylvania
Unknown
This is a meticulous, state-wide catalog of the Commonwealth’s physical legacy, serving as a time capsule of early 20th-century civic pride. It functions as both a traveler’s companion and a scholarly record of Pennsylvania’s architectural and historical milestones.

Poems on various subjects, religious and moral
Phillis Wheatley
HOOK This collection of verse captures a singular voice in eighteenth-century literature, blending classical refinement with a profound, urgent focus on spiritual transcendence and the nature of human grief.

A History of Greek Economic Thought
Albert Augustus Trever
A scholarly exploration of ancient economic theory, this work traces how the Greeks wrestled with the ethics of wealth, the nature of labor, and the foundations of a just society.

Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry
Unknown
This anthology serves as a vital record of a vanishing oral tradition, capturing the supernatural landscape of Ireland through the voices, superstitions, and imaginations of its rural people.

France in the Nineteenth Century
Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer
This historical survey documents the rapid-fire political volatility of France from 1830 to 1890, capturing a century defined by the constant, clashing ambitions of monarchs, presidents, and revolutionaries.

A Defence of Poesie and Poems
Philip Sidney
An impassioned argument for the power of the creative imagination, this seminal work contends that literature does more than merely reflect the world; it transforms it into something golden.

An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine
John Henry Newman
A profound exploration of how religious truths evolve over centuries, this work argues that the development of Christian dogma is a natural, logical, and vital process of historical maturation.

Little Folks (December 1884): A Magazine for the Young
Various
A Victorian miscellany weaves together serial dramas of stolen children and lost inheritances with practical craft guides, historical sketches, and natural history lessons for young readers.

Manalive
G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
A man who has traveled the world arrives at a quiet boarding house, only to be accused of a series of bizarre crimes that he treats as cosmic jokes. This story explores whether life is a tragedy to be endured or a divine adventure to be reclaimed.

The Years Between
Rudyard Kipling
The weight of a world at war presses through every line, offering a somber, unflinching look at the cost of duty and the fragility of peace. This collection of verse captures the sharp, bitter transition of an era defined by sacrifice.

Poems
Mary Baker Eddy
Poetry is the language of a soul reaching for the divine, reflecting a life of profound spiritual search and quiet, persistent hope. These verses capture the turning points of a century, mapping a journey from personal grief toward an unwavering trust in a higher, healing power.

The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864: Devoted To Literature And National Policy
Various
This collection of essays and commentary captures the intellectual and political fever of the American Civil War, offering a window into the preoccupations of a nation in the midst of a transformative, violent crisis.

A Journey from Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean in the Years 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772: New Edition with Introduction, Notes, and Illustrations
Samuel Hearne
A relentless trek across the unforgiving Canadian North, this record tracks an explorer’s struggle to bridge the gap between indigenous knowledge and the ambitions of a colonial trading company.

Blazed trail stories, and Stories of the wild life
Stewart Edward White
The harsh beauty and relentless morality of the American frontier find a voice in these sharp, unvarnished snapshots of life in the logging camps and mining outposts of the West.

On The Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation
David Ricardo
Wealth is generated by labor and divided among three distinct classes: the landlord, the capitalist, and the laborer. This foundational inquiry reveals how the laws governing rent, profit, and wages dictate the stability and progress of nations.

Style in Singing
W. E. Haslam
Singing is not merely the production of beautiful sound; it is the sophisticated fusion of music and poetry, requiring an artist to master both technical precision and the nuance of human expression.

Fruit-Gathering
Rabindranath Tagore
The harvest of a life is gathered not in the abundance of one’s store, but in the willingness to offer oneself entirely to the light. This collection of poems maps the interior geography of a soul learning to discard the heavy burden of worldly pride in favor of a profound, humble union with the divine.

Reminiscences of Anton Chekhov
Maksim Gorky
A portrait of a quiet, singular genius, this collection gathers the intimate observations of those who stood closest to the man who redefined the possibilities of the short story.