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British Literature — page 16

768 public-domain british literature books, summarised. Page 16 of 16.

Poems

W. B. (William Butler) Yeats

These verses trace the drift of Irish myth and memory, weaving the fragile beauty of mortal longing into the ancient, cold indifference of the faery world. They offer a quiet passage into a twilight landscape where the old gods remain silent and the human heart seeks a refuge that never stays still.

British Literature7 min read

Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems

Christina Georgina Rossetti

The journey toward a final rest is a winding, uphill climb, yet those who walk the path find that the road is shared by all who have gone before.

British Literature6 min read

A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726): [and] Pudding and Dumpling Burnt to Pot. Or a Compleat Key to the Dissertation on Dumpling (1727)

Henry Carey

A satirical pair of pamphlets uses the humble dumpling as an elaborate, absurd, and biting allegory for the political corruption and moral emptiness of 18th-century English court life.

British Literature6 min read

The Prose Works of William Wordsworth: For the First Time Collected, With Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts. In Three Volumes

William Wordsworth

A lifetime of fierce political passion, aesthetic theory, and private meditation unfolds across this comprehensive collection of William Wordsworth’s scattered prose works.

British Literature10 min read

The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 07 (of 12)

William Hazlitt

Human nature reveals itself through the friction between cold analytical theories and the vibrant, unpredictable heat of genuine aesthetic feeling, lived experience, and moral intuition.

British Literature12 min read

Anne of Green Gables

L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery

A bright, fiercely imaginative orphan transforms a quiet rural community through sheer warmth of spirit and an unyielding passion for life.

British Literature7 min read

Tales and Stories: Now First Collected

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Across landscapes of mountain feuds, secret alchemy, and revolutionary terror, wandering souls grapple with the bitter consequences of devotion, revenge, and eternal isolation.

British Literature8 min read

The War in the Air

H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

A modest English clerk accidentally steals the world’s ultimate military secret and gets swept into a terrifying, civilization-shattering global war fought from the skies.

British Literature5 min read

The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes, Volume 02: The Rambler, Volume I

Samuel Johnson

A solitary moralist examines the human heart, probing the quiet self-deceptions, social anxieties, and intellectual ambitions that govern everyday life.

British Literature10 min read

Crome Yellow

Aldous Huxley

A self-conscious young poet flees his own romantic indecision only to orchestrate his exile from the one place he longs to remain.

British Literature7 min read

Six Centuries of English Poetry: Tennyson to Chaucer

James Baldwin

Six centuries of poetic expression reveal how language shifts while human longings remain fundamentally unchanged.

British Literature6 min read

The Vicar of Wakefield

Oliver Goldsmith

A gentle, high-minded country vicar loses his fortune and is dragged with his family through a series of absurd deceptions, catastrophic losses, and villainous betrayals, only to find his faith in human goodness tested to its absolute limit.

British Literature7 min read

The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 01 (of 12)

William Hazlitt

A combative mind takes on the literary establishment, defending the vitality of art and human nature against frozen dogmas, cautious critics, and political hypocrites.

British Literature10 min read

The Nursery "Alice"

Lewis Carroll

A little girl falls down a deep well into a strange world where growth and shrinkage follow every bite, and animals talk in riddles.

British Literature7 min read

Tales from Shakespeare

Charles Lamb

A collection of classic plays transformed into prose narratives opens up rich theatrical worlds, offering readers a clear and accessible entrance into dramatic literature while carefully retaining the spirit, vocabulary, and cadence of the original works.

British Literature6 min read

Charles Dickens and other Victorians

Arthur Quiller-Couch

A critic cuts through century-old literary dust to evaluate how nineteenth-century storytellers actually constructed their fictional worlds.

British Literature6 min read

Young Mr. Barter's Repentance: From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray

David Christie Murray

When a sudden financial collapse shatters a reputable London merchant, a trail of missing bank-notes unleashes a tangled web of greed, blackmail, and desperate deceit.

British Literature6 min read

Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion

Beatrice E. (Beatrice Elizabeth) Clay

A realm of magic, chivalry, and tragic betrayal comes alive through classic legends of Arthurian knights and ancient Welsh heroes.

British Literature7 min read

The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 01

Robert Louis Stevenson

A young Scottish writer wanders through foreign riverways, French mountain trails, and his own storied hometown, transforming simple observation into a masterclass in atmospheric travel prose.

British Literature7 min read

Maud, and Other Poems

Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron

A bitter young man mourns his father's ruined life and violent death in a dark hollow, nursing hatred for the wealthy estate owner whose financial schemes drove his family to disaster.

British Literature6 min read

Rewards and Fairies

Rudyard Kipling

Across the ancient fields of the English countryside, two children step into whispered encounters with figures summoned from three thousand years of forgotten history.

British Literature7 min read

Fairies and Fusiliers

Robert Graves

Youthful daydreams of fairies and ancient legends clash violently with the cold, muddy horrors of the Western Front, forcing a wounded soldier to rebuild his shattered world through verse.

British Literature5 min read

Heartbreak House

Bernard Shaw

In a eccentric English country house on the eve of the Great War, a collection of cultured, romantic, and cynical aristocrats drift through life, blissfully oblivious to their impending doom.

British Literature6 min read

Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Now First Published

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Faith, sensory wonder, and deep psychological distress collide in a body of verse that remakes the cadences of traditional English poetry into something altogether new, urgent, and radically alive.

British Literature6 min read

Jane Austen and Her Country-house Comedy

W. H. (William Henry) Helm

A rare blend of good-natured satire and quiet observation transforms the domestic world of early nineteenth-century country houses into an enduring canvas of human folly, social ambition, and understated moral truth.

British Literature6 min read

Sylvie and Bruno

Lewis Carroll

Two realm-bound visions collide in a feverish, shape-shifting landscape where political palace coups melt into sweet fairy encounters and high-minded Victorian tea-parlor debates.

British Literature7 min read

The Vision and Creed of Piers Ploughman, Volume 1

William Langland

A wandering dreamer sleeps on the Malvern Hills and observes a vast field full of folk, uncovering the deep spiritual and moral rot of medieval English society.

British Literature6 min read

Adonais

Percy Bysshe Shelley

A sorrowing poet transforms personal tragedy into a sweeping meditation on art, immortality, and the eternal power of the creative spirit.

British Literature6 min read

Hamlet

William Shakespeare

A grieving prince encounters his father’s ghost, discovering a murder that demands a vengeance he cannot bring himself to swiftly exact.

British Literature7 min read

The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

A brilliant mind races against failing health, sending warm, witty, and candid letters from Scottish mists to remote Pacific islands. It captures a life lived with relentless creative drive despite constant physical fragility.

British Literature7 min read

The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith

Oliver Goldsmith

A gentle observer wanders through depopulated hamlets, bustling taverns, and ruined pastures, recording how human affection withstands the quiet losses of time. His verse turns local heartbreaks and personal follies into lasting reflections on human nature.

British Literature7 min read

Speeches: Literary and Social

Charles Dickens

Public addresses and banquet toasts transform the celebrated novelist into a relentless advocate for public health, popular education, and charitable care across Victorian Britain and America.

British Literature7 min read

The Diary of a Nobody

George Grossmith

Charles Pooter is a middle-class clerk living in a modest London suburb who believes his daily observations deserve a place in history.

British Literature6 min read

The Bride of Lammermoor

Walter Scott

A dark Scottish valley frames a tragic feud between an impoverished heir and the powerful family who seized his ancestral land.

British Literature7 min read

Major Barbara

Bernard Shaw

Poverty starves the human soul, but can the profits of total destruction purchase its true salvation?

British Literature6 min read

The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family

William Makepeace Thackeray

A warm-hearted Indian Army veteran returns to England to secure his artist son’s happiness, only to see their fortunes devoured by aristocratic snobbery and financial ruin.

British Literature12 min read

The Shakespeare Story-Book

William Shakespeare

Two lovers run into a dark wood to escape a harsh father, unaware that fairies and actors are waiting to twist their lives into sweet, hilarious chaos.

British Literature7 min read

Romeo and Juliet

William Shakespeare

Two young lovers from feuding families fall swiftly into a secret devotion that defies their world's entrenched hatred, only to be crushed by circumstance, misunderstanding, and bad timing.

British Literature6 min read

The Way of All Flesh

Samuel Butler

A sharp, satirical look at the stifling grip of Victorian family life and the slow, painful work of freeing oneself from it.

British Literature8 min read

Virginibus Puerisque, and Other Papers

Robert Louis Stevenson

Youth measures life by distant horizons, but true wisdom lies in settling into the present hour with an open, inquiring heart.

British Literature6 min read

Old Mortality, Complete

Walter Scott

A young Scot torn between conflicting devotions is dragged into the bloody whirlwind of the Covenanter uprising, where fanaticism and uncompromising loyalty destroy everything they touch.

British Literature8 min read

Poems of William Blake

William Blake

A pastoral vision of natural innocence unravels into terrifying industrial and psychological realities, capturing the fragile transition from childhood grace to human suffering.

British Literature5 min read

The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vol. 2 [of 2]

Percy Bysshe Shelley

A profound faith in human potential drives these pages, where radiant idealism confronts the harsh political realities of an age bound to tyranny.

British Literature6 min read

The Task, and Other Poems

William Cowper

A quiet retreat in the English countryside yields profound reflections on nature, domestic peace, and the troubling noise of human ambition.

British Literature6 min read

The women novelists

R. Brimley (Reginald Brimley) Johnson

An insightful survey of creative self-discovery traces how female authors shifted from mimicking male literary traditions to carving out their own distinct, enduring art.

British Literature6 min read

A Modern Utopia

H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

A traveler wandering through the Swiss Alps steps into an identical parallel world where humanity has organized a sane, planetary society.

British Literature5 min read

Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson: Selected and Edited With an Introduction and Notes by William Lyon Phelps

Robert Louis Stevenson

A sharp intelligence watches human vulnerability, finding grace not in perfection, but in the lively persistence of ordinary life.

British Literature7 min read

Shakspere and Montaigne: An Endeavour to Explain the Tendency of 'Hamlet' from Allusions in Contemporary Works

Jacob Feis

William Shakespeare did not write Hamlet in a philosophical vacuum, nor was the play merely a blood-soaked revenge tragedy designed to satisfy the groundlings.

British Literature6 min read