The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 96
47,382 public-domain books, summarised. Page 96 of 988.
Sketches by Seymour
Robert Seymour
A collection of caricatures and sketches from the 1830s, this work captures the absurdity of London life through the misadventures of cockney sportsmen, bungling travelers, and the socially ambitious.
A Popular History of the Art of Music: From the Earliest Times Until the Present
W. S. B. (William Smythe Babcock) Mathews
This historical survey traces the evolution of Western music from its prehistoric origins to the late nineteenth century. It aims to bridge the gap between academic musicology and the general listener through a chronological, biographical narrative.
Charlotte Temple
Mrs. Rowson
A young girl’s impetuous choice to abandon her home and family leads to a devastating journey of betrayal, isolation, and eventual ruin in a foreign land. This cautionary tale remains a poignant exploration of the consequences of youthful indiscretion and the enduring power of forgiveness.
In our time
Ernest Hemingway
In this collection of vignettes and short stories, the trauma of the Great War and the brutality of the bullring converge to reveal a world stripped of its illusions. Life is rendered in spare, unsparing prose that cuts through the noise of the early twentieth century to find the singular, often jagged, truth of…
Maxims for Revolutionists
Bernard Shaw
This collection of aphorisms serves as a sharp-edged toolkit for those who wish to dismantle convention, challenge authority, and rethink the foundations of social existence. It is not a narrative, but a radical examination of the illusions—political, moral, and personal—that sustain the status quo.
The political novel
Joseph Blotner
Exploring how literature captures the machinery of power, this study examines the political novel as a unique instrument for interpreting human behavior, historical crisis, and the complex struggle between individual conscience and institutional mandates.
The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America: 1638-1870
W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois
This scholarly work provides a definitive, sobering account of how the African slave trade persisted in the United States long after it was ostensibly outlawed. It traces the tangled history of American law, commerce, and moral failure from the colonial era through the outbreak of the Civil War.
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 02 (of 12)
Edmund Burke
This collection gathers the oratorical output of a prominent 18th-century statesman, tracking his attempts to reconcile imperial authority with the principles of liberty and fiscal accountability. It serves as a masterclass in political rhetoric and the complexities of governance during the British Empire’s expansion.
U.S. Copyright Renewals, 1961 July - December
Library of Congress. Copyright Office
This catalog serves as a formal, historical record of the creative works that regained their legal protection during the latter half of 1961. It maps the literary landscape of a generation through the lens of copyright law.
Our Deportment: Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society
John H. Young
To navigate the intricacies of Victorian-era social life, one must master the subtle arts of etiquette, personal presentation, and the precise management of home and business affairs.
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863: Devoted to Literature and National Policy
Various
The mid-Civil War period was marked by an urgent, intellectual reckoning with the American experiment; this collection captures that volatile moment by blending political manifesto, literary critique, and personal narrative.
The Life of Tolstoy: First Fifty Years: Fifth Edition
Aylmer Maude
This biography charts the formative half-century of a literary giant, tracing how an aristocratic youth evolved into the searching, conflicted moralist who would eventually challenge the foundations of church, state, and society.
Aurora Leigh
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
This verse novel tracks a woman’s struggle to claim her vocation as an artist, arguing that true creation requires a fusion of the natural world and the spiritual soul. It serves as both a manifesto for female autonomy and a panoramic critique of Victorian social divisions.
McGuffey's Second Eclectic Reader
William Holmes McGuffey
This foundational collection of lessons for young students uses simple, rhythmic stories and poetry to teach reading while cultivating character, diligence, and empathy.
The Princess
Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron
This narrative poem unfolds as a playful, multi-layered frame story that explores the collision of Victorian gender roles, intellectual ambition, and the enduring pull of romantic love. It is a work of sophisticated artifice, blending archaic courtly romance with a sharp, nineteenth-century debate over women’s…
Esther's triumph
Emma Leslie
A girl’s prideful misunderstanding leads to a desperate, wandering flight from home, while a maligned neighbor proves that true character is often found in the most humble of places.
Justice
John Galsworthy
A man commits a desperate, singular crime to save the woman he loves, only to find that the machinery of the law—once set in motion—cannot be halted by mercy. This play serves as a harrowing indictment of a judicial system that prioritizes abstract justice over human reality.
Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine
William Carew Hazlitt
From the medieval spit to the elaborate puddings of the seventeenth century, the evolution of the English kitchen mirrors the shifting habits, manners, and social aspirations of a nation defining itself through its table.
Rembrandt and His Works: Comprising a Short Account of His Life
John Burnet
The master of light and shadow, Rembrandt lives on through his etchings, a body of work that reveals the artist’s profound ability to find truth in both the grandest historical scenes and the simplest human gestures.
The history of fashion in France
Augustin Challamel
French culture has long been synonymous with the art of the silhouette, and this sweeping chronicle traces the evolution of that obsession from ancient Gaul to the late nineteenth century. It is a detailed, era-by-era survey that connects the shifting textures of French dress to the political and social pulse of…
The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I
Euripides
These ancient dramas strip away the veneer of heroic legend to expose the raw, turbulent hearts of figures caught in the grinding machinery of fate. They remain the foundational blueprints for every tragedy that followed.
Her Royal Highness Woman
Max O'Rell
This collection of observations serves as a witty, opinionated, and unapologetically traditional guide to the roles, charms, and domestic responsibilities of women in the late nineteenth century.
Manual of Classical Erotology (De figuris Veneris)
Unknown
This rigorous, encyclopedic study of ancient sexuality functions as a clinical survey of the erotic customs, anatomy, and social perversions that characterized the classical world. It presents a systematic, detached classification of human desire as recorded in the literature of Greece and Rome.
Mountain Meditations, and some subjects of the day and the war
L. (Lizzy) Lind-af-Hageby
This collection of essays offers a contemplative look at the intersection of spiritual inquiry, social reform, and the enduring human search for meaning amidst the backdrop of the First World War.
The Patchwork Girl of Oz
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
A patchwork girl stitched from scraps and brought to life by magic embarks on a whimsical, high-stakes journey across a vibrant, enchanted landscape to save her friends from a permanent, stone-like fate.
Vera
Oscar Wilde
A young woman caught between a vow of political vengeance and the stirrings of forbidden love must decide the fate of an empire. In this high-stakes drama, the personal and the political collide with fatal consequences.
Benjamin Franklin: A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago
John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
This biography serves as a detailed chronicle of Benjamin Franklin’s life, framing his personal evolution alongside the slow, inevitable birth of the American nation. It balances his scientific curiosity and diplomatic triumphs with a candid acknowledgement of his early spiritual doubts and moral failings.
The American
Henry James
A self-made American millionaire ventures to Paris seeking the finest life has to offer, only to discover that Europe’s ancient aristocratic families guard their doors with a ruthlessness his fortune cannot buy. This is a story of collision between the blunt, honest vigor of the New World and the calcified,…
The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon
Thomas Hardy
A panoramic vision of the Napoleonic Wars, this epic drama traces the rise and fall of an empire through the eyes of both historical titans and common observers.
The World of Flying Saucers: A Scientific Examination of a Major Myth of the Space Age
Donald H. (Donald Howard) Menzel
The skies are not as empty as they appear, but the objects populating them are almost always terrestrial in origin, rooted in the familiar physics of light, atmosphere, and human error.
A House of Pomegranates
Oscar Wilde
These four fairy tales explore the heavy cost of pride and the redemptive power of mercy, weaving ornate, jewel-toned prose into narratives that feel both timeless and deeply melancholic.
Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady
Samuel Richardson
The tragedy of a young woman caught between an uncompromising family and a brilliant, predatory suitor, this monumental work explores the devastating cost of a daughter’s resistance. It is a profound study of character, cruelty, and the power of the written word.
The Book of Khalid
Ameen Fares Rihani
The story of a young Lebanese immigrant navigating the chaotic, materialist landscape of early twentieth-century New York, this philosophical narrative tracks a restless soul’s search for identity across two worlds. It is a lyrical, unconventional meditation on the struggle to reconcile ancient spiritual roots with…
The Tatler, Volume 4
Steele, Richard, Sir
This collection of 18th-century periodical essays serves as a witty, observant mirror of its age. It captures the social anxieties and moral ambitions of a society transitioning into modernity through the eyes of an urbane commentator.
The Three Bears
Anonymous
A young girl with bright curls wanders into the home of a bear family. What follows is a spirited, rhythmic confrontation that tests the boundaries of hospitality, curiosity, and the wild world of the woods.
George Sand: Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings
René Doumic
This exploration of a singular literary life captures the evolution of a woman who translated her own restless search for meaning into the heartbeat of nineteenth-century French fiction.
Robin Hood: A collection of all the ancient poems, songs, and ballads, now extant, relative to that celebrated English outlaw. To which are prefixed historical anecdotes of his life
Unknown
This collection gathers the oldest surviving verses of a legendary English outlaw, painting a portrait of a defiant yeoman whose name echoes through the ancient forests of Northern England. It serves as a definitive archive of a mythic life, tracing the transition of a folk hero from a simple forest dweller into an…
De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2): The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera
Pietro Martire d' Anghiera
The first chronicler of the Americas weaves reports of transatlantic exploration into a vivid, scholarly tapestry of discovery, documenting the irreversible collision between the Old World and the New.
The History of Painting in Italy, Vol. 2 (of 6): From the Period of the Revival of the Fine Arts to the End of the Eighteenth Century
Luigi Lanzi
The Roman and Neapolitan schools emerge through a meticulous survey of artistic lineage, where the evolution of style is traced from the early masters to the refined, reasoned aesthetics of the late eighteenth century.
Apocolocyntosis
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The halls of Olympus are rarely so crowded with absurdity as when an emperor demands to be worshipped by the gods he once ruled. This sharp satire turns the dignity of the afterlife into a chaotic farce.
Forgotten Books of the American Nursery: A History of the Development of the American Story-Book
Rosalie Vrylina Halsey
This historical study traces the evolution of American children’s literature from grim colonial primers to the early nineteenth-century emergence of a distinct, homegrown story-book culture.
Lysis
Plato
Seeking the nature of a bond that links us all, this dialogue probes the elusive heart of human connection. It examines whether we are drawn to our own reflection or to that which we fundamentally lack.
The Babylonian Legends of the Creation
Budge, E. A. Wallis (Ernest Alfred Wallis), Sir
This collection of ancient Mesopotamian texts reconstructs the foundational myths of the Babylonian universe, preserved on fragile clay tablets unearthed from the ruins of Nineveh. It offers a rare, scholarly window into how the people of the Euphrates Valley understood the origins of the heavens, the earth, and…
A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718
Wallace Notestein
This rigorous historical survey tracks the shifting legal and cultural tides of English witchcraft from the reign of Elizabeth I to the early eighteenth century. It offers a sober, evidence-based account of a turbulent era.
British Flags: Their Early History, and Their Development at Sea: With an Account of the Origin of the Flag as a National Device
William Gordon Perrin
The flags flown by the British fleet were never mere decorations; they were the essential, evolving language of naval command, maritime law, and national identity upon the high seas.
Cane
Jean Toomer
Deep-rooted in the Southern soil, these stories and poems surge with the fever of a land caught between the weight of history and the ache for a new, unwritten future.
The Book of Religions: Comprising the Views, Creeds, Sentiments, or Opinions, of All the Principal Religious Sects in the World, Particularly of All Christian Denominations in Europe and America, to Which are Added Church and Missionary Statistics, Together With Biographical Sketches
John Hayward
A panoramic exploration of human belief, this compendium maps the vast, intricate geography of religious thought across centuries and continents. It serves as an exhaustive directory of how humanity has sought to define the divine.
The Logic of Chance, 3rd edition: An Essay on the Foundations and Province of the Theory of Probability, With Especial Reference to Its Logical Bearings and Its Application to Moral and Social Science and to Statistics
John Venn
This inquiry into the nature of chance shifts the focus from abstract mathematics to the observable regularities of human life, arguing that probability is best understood as a study of long-term frequency.