Free summaries
British Literature — page 14
650 public-domain british literature books, summarised. Page 14 of 14.
Antony and Cleopatra
William Shakespeare
A colossal military leader abandons political duty for an intoxicating, volatile romance in Egypt, sparking a global civil war that shatters an empire.
A century of English essays
Unknown
Centuries of English thought unfold through a choir of distinct voices, mapping the quiet shifts of daily life, human frailty, and spiritual wonder.
Illustrations of Shakspeare, and of Ancient Manners:: with Dissertations on the Clowns and Fools of Shakspeare
Francis Douce
Unearthing the forgotten customs, linguistic eccentricities, and folklore behind Early Modern drama, an antiquarian meticulously decodes the lost world that shaped Shakespeare's plays and popular entertainments.
The Eyes of Asia
Rudyard Kipling
Letters sent home by Indian soldiers fighting in France during World War I reveal a profound, transforming encounter between Eastern traditions and Western modernity.
Zanoni
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
A centuries-old immortal faces an agonizing choice between endless, untouched existence and the mortal world of love, passion, and ultimate self-sacrifice during the blood-soaked Reign of Terror.
The Secret Sharer
Joseph Conrad
A midnight swimmer climbs aboard an anchored ship, binding a young, isolated captain to a fugitive who shares his secret identity.
The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan
W. S. (William Schwenck) Gilbert
These fourteen librettos capture Victorian society at its most brilliant, sending absurd aristocrats, earnest idealists, and strict moralists tumbling into dizzying paradoxes.
Why we should read--
S. P. B. (Stuart Petre Brodie) Mais
Literary appreciation demands neither academic stiffness nor blind reverence, but an eager, open-hearted engagement with the written word. This critical guide surveys classic and contemporary literature, offering an infectious defense of reading for sheer vital enjoyment.
The Good Soldier
Ford Madox Ford
A pristine facade of upper-class propriety collapses into betrayal, madness, and suicide when two couples spend nine years pretending their lives are utterly civil and refined.
The Ball and the Cross
G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
A passionate Young Ireland Catholic and a fiercely dogmatic Scottish atheist agree to fight a duel to the death over a smashed shop window, only to find the entire modern world conspiring to keep them from settling their difference.
Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends
John Keats
A young English poet records the raw, unvarnished collision between high artistic ambition and the crushing physical and financial realities of mortal life.
Hamlet
William Shakespeare
A grieving prince discovers his uncle murdered his father to seize the throne and marry his mother. Paralyzed by doubt and surrounded by spies, he feigns madness while plotting a delayed, ruinous revenge.
The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Cæsar
William Shakespeare
When a powerful leader's vaulting ambition threatens to swallow a republic, honorable men are forced to choose between loyalty to their friend and devotion to their nation.
The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke
Rupert Brooke
A young man captures the ecstatic, sensory rush of early youth, turns through heartbreak and travel, and ultimately greets mortal sacrifice with serene, romantic resolve.
Beowulf
Francis Barton Gummere
A lordless foundling builds an empire, and a hero must fight the monsters left in the dark.
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Edwin Abbott Abbott
A two-dimensional square living in a flat world travels beyond his native plane, discovering high-dimensional realms that shatter his narrow worldview and turn him into a radical prophet of higher spatial possibilities.
The Professor
Charlotte Brontë
Refusing the comforts of easy romance, an ambitious young Englishman sets out for Belgium to carve out his own modest, unvarnished destiny.
The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
A stolen cholera germ, a bloodthirsty orchid, and a creature haunting an astronomical observatory: these fifteen tales blend Victorian science with bizarre, speculative terror.
The Portrait of a Lady
Henry James
An ardent young American woman inherits a sudden fortune and travels to Europe to seek an expansive life, only to find her fiercely guarded independence ensnared by a cold and calculating fortune hunter.
The Sleeper Awakes: A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
A man falls into a two-hundred-year trance, only to wake as the absolute, fabulously wealthy master of a hyper-capitalist future he never asked for.
Jacob's Room
Virginia Woolf
A young man moves through the world like a shadow in late afternoon light: clearly outlined, endlessly observed, yet inherently impossible to fully hold or know.
The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman
Laurence Sterne
A baby is born into a world where a broken nose, a mischosen name, and a father's convoluted theories shape a life before it even properly begins.
More English Fairy Tales
Unknown
Ancient folklore comes to life through spirited English tricksters, shape-shifting spirits, and clever rustic fools.
The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 1
Alexander Pope
Mastering every shade of verse from delicate rural landscapes to razor-sharp social satire, this volume captures an entire era’s intellectual life through one poet's unmatched mastery of heroic couplets.
Barry Lyndon
William Makepeace Thackeray
An audacious Irish fortune-hunter blunders and bravadoes his way across eighteenth-century Europe, charting his rise from penniless provincial duels to high-society opulence—and his inevitable, self-inflicted ruin.
The Jew of Malta
Christopher Marlowe
A villainous merchant turns his infinite capacity for malice against the rulers of Malta after they seize his fortune to pay off an invading army.