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British Literature — page 17
882 public-domain british literature books, summarised. Page 17 of 19.

A Warwickshire Lad: The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare
George Madden Martin
An imaginative boy growing up in sixteenth-century Stratford discovers that the world around him, from local ghost stories to forest fields, holds the raw material for a life of art.

The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church: Containing the Sermones Catholici, or Homilies of Ælfric, in the Original Anglo-Saxon, with an English Version. Volume I
Abbot of Eynsham Aelfric
In an age when early English culture was poised between ancient oral traditions and the written word of the Latin Church, Abbot Ælfric produced a monumental collection of vernacular sermons designed to bring central Christian teachings to ordinary believers.

The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900
Unknown
A quiet conversation across seven centuries of human voice unfolds when the lyric tradition is gathered with patient care.

The Story of Peter Pan, Retold from the fairy play by Sir James Barrie
J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie
A boy who refuses to age lures three nursery-bound siblings out their window to an enchanted island of pirates, fairies, and lost children.

King Lear
William Shakespeare
When an aging monarch demands public professions of love from his daughters in exchange for his realm, he mistakes flattering performance for true devotion, setting off a ruinous collapse of authority, family, and human decency.

The Book of Nonsense
Edward Lear
A gallery of eccentric individuals confronts the absurdities of their own physical traits, stubborn habits, and the violent or bewildered reactions of the pragmatic crowds surrounding them.
![Cover of The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [Vol. 7 of 9]](https://cdn.myebooksbuy.com/c/the-works-of-william-shakespeare-cambridge-edition-vol-7-of-9-william.webp)
The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [Vol. 7 of 9]
William Shakespeare
Shadows, blood, and bright young passion collide in a dark world where fate leaves no room for hesitation.

The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti: From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.)
David Christie Murray
Driven by a high-hearted impulse, a impoverished Italian painter in London takes in a destitute family, only to find his loyalty tested by jealousy, a fatal misunderstanding, and a Neapolitan murder trial.

Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Lord Byron
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron
An exhaustive roadmap to a literary titan's legacy, this compilation organizes every poem, drama, letter, and journal entry of Lord Byron into a master inventory.

Curious Epitaphs, Collected from the Graveyards of Great Britain and Ireland
William Andrews
A curious survey of mortality, this collection reveals how the British dead chose to be remembered: through puns, trades, quirks, and the quiet rhythm of forgotten lives.

The Spanish Tragedie
Thomas Kyd
A slain knight’s spirit watches from the shadows of the underworld as his earthly beloved, his grieving father, and his murderous rivals tear a royal court apart.

Three men on the bummel
Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka) Jerome
Three Victorian friends take a cycling tour across Germany, turning misdirected navigation, public regulations, and odd local customs into an affectionate study of human absurdity.

The Princess and the Goblin
George MacDonald
Deep beneath a royal country home, an underground race of grotesquely missedhapen goblins plots to kidnap a little princess, setting off an enchanting battle between subterranean darkness and the steady, luminous power of faith.

Poems
William Ernest Henley
A soul forging resilience through physical pain, loss, and urban grit learns to embrace life’s fierce beauty before surrendering calmly to the inevitable dark.

Chronicles of Avonlea
L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery
Down off the coast of Prince Edward Island, small lives quietly collide over pride, old grudges, and sudden leaps of grace, where a deferred love story can turn on a walk through a moonlit lane or a child in a hogshead.

The Defendant
G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
The world is often misjudged because we mistake the familiar for the bad, dismissing the gold of our own existence as mere dust. This collection invites us to reclaim the wonder hidden in plain sight.

The Tower of Oblivion
Oliver Onions
A man begins to shed his adult life, regressing through time toward a long-lost youth. This haunting narrative explores the terrifying, beautiful erosion of identity as the past physically reclaims the present.

The Antiquary
Walter Scott
This intricate portrait of a Scottish coastal community captures the tension between fading feudal traditions and the relentless, often unromantic, march of modern life. It remains a foundational work of historical realism, celebrated for its sharp wit and deeply human characters.

The Poison Belt
Arthur Conan Doyle
As the earth drifts into a lethal belt of cosmic ether, four survivors barricaded in a room must confront the extinction of humanity and the terrifying fragility of life.

King Henry V: Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre
William Shakespeare
A young king stakes his nation's future on a desperate invasion of France, transforming from a wild, reckless youth into a resolute commander beneath the weight of an imperial crown.

The Monastery
Walter Scott
The struggle for the soul of 16th-century Scotland plays out in the shadow of a crumbling monastery, where ancient traditions collide with the rising tide of the Reformation.

The Tailor of Gloucester
Beatrix Potter
A poverty-stricken tailor becomes entangled with a community of secret, industrious mice while racing to finish a mayor's wedding coat before Christmas. This gentle, atmospheric tale celebrates the quiet magic of kindness and the spirit of the season.
Coningsby
Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield
Young adulthood is a battlefield where ancestral legacy meets the urgent, unwritten demands of a changing nation. This narrative explores the awakening of a political consciousness, tracing the journey of a refined protagonist as he navigates the hollow grandeur of aristocratic society to find his own truth.

The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
In this expansive philosophical poem, a meditative journey through the English mountains serves as a vessel for exploring the deepest questions of human grief, endurance, and the consoling power of nature.

Tono-Bungay
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
A young man navigates the hollow illusions of modern commerce and the social ladder, ultimately finding that the only reality worth pursuing is the austere, relentless truth of science.

The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
Arthur Conan Doyle
A dense London fog obscures a dangerous theft of national secrets, forcing an unlikely investigator to pursue a killer through the city's subterranean tunnels.

Dickens' London
M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
London is a city of shadows, soot, and sudden, vivid life, captured here through the landmarks that anchored the imagination of its most celebrated literary son. This volume acts as a topographical map for the reader who wishes to walk the streets as they appeared to a novelist who found beauty in the most…

Milton's Comus
John Milton
The darkness of the woods hides a dangerous tempter, but a pure heart finds a shield in its own virtue. This lyrical drama explores the triumph of temperance over the illusions of the senses.

The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 05 (of 12)
Edmund Burke
This collection of late-career writings presents a fierce, intellectual defense of traditional order against the encroaching tide of revolutionary upheaval. It captures a mind attempting to reconcile the endurance of the state with the volatile reality of a Europe fundamentally altered by the French Revolution.

The Forsyte saga, Volume 2 : Indian summer of a Forsyte
John Galsworthy
A portrait of a vanishing world, this chronicle traces the quiet, stubborn endurance of a family whose wealth and order cannot shield them from the inevitable erosion of time and the ache of human desire.

Thomas Dekker: Edited, with an introduction and notes by Ernest Rhys. Unexpurgated Edition
Thomas Dekker
These plays capture the vibrant, gritty soul of London through characters who navigate the precarious divide between soaring ambition and the crushing weight of social ruin.

The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
The dawn of a new, gargantuan era arrives not with a bang, but with a scientific formula, forever altering the scale of existence and pitting the ordinary human world against its own progeny.

The Toys of Peace, and Other Papers
Saki
A sharp, cynical wit dissects the trivialities of early 20th-century English life, revealing the vanity and underlying cruelty beneath the veneer of polite society.

Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England
Unknown
This collection gathers the voices of England’s past, preserving the songs and ballads that once echoed through harvest fields, taverns, and village greens. It offers a rare, unvarnished look at the rhythms of rural life across centuries.

Grapes of wrath
Boyd Cable
The trenches of the Somme are a theater of relentless, grinding attrition where the ordinary soldier’s survival depends on grit, grim humor, and the luck of the draw.

The Voice of Science in Nineteenth-Century Literature: Representative Prose and Verse
Unknown
Science and literature often appear as competing forces, yet this anthology reveals their profound, centuries-long conversation. By bridging the gap between rigorous scientific inquiry and the expansive reach of human expression, the collection highlights how the nineteenth century grappled with a world being…

The Explorer
W. Somerset (William Somerset) Maugham
A man of iron resolve returns from the African interior to a world of idle, skeptical Londoners, forcing his beloved to choose between the safety of social convention and an absolute, harrowing faith in his honor.

The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 2
Alexander Pope
A master of biting wit and perfect form, this poet turned the act of literary destruction into a grand, dark comedy that still vibrates with the echoes of eighteenth-century London.

Songs From Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
Lewis Carroll
These whimsical verses capture the fractured, delightful logic of a dream, inviting readers into a world where nonsense reigns and the ordinary is constantly turned upside down.
Sybil, Or, The Two Nations
Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield
Two nations, the rich and the poor, occupy the same land but live as though they are divided by an unbridgeable chasm. This novel traces the collision of their worlds during the turbulent rise of the Chartist movement.

Early English Alliterative Poems: in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century
Unknown
These fourteenth-century poems explore the fragile boundary between mortal grief and divine grace, using the intricate, rhythmic beauty of alliterative verse to navigate the deepest questions of the human spirit.

Trilby
George Du Maurier
HOOK A group of bohemian artists in Paris finds their lives irrevocably altered when a tone-deaf model is transformed into a world-famous singer by a sinister hypnotist.

Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend
Browne, Thomas, Sir
An elegant, inquisitive mind wanders through the mysteries of faith, the melancholy of mortality, and the curious physical remnants of those long buried. These pieces capture the voice of a man uniquely at home in both science and prayer.

A Child's Garden of Verses
Robert Louis Stevenson
A child’s imagination is a vast, untamed country where a meadow becomes a stormy sea and a nursery floor turns into a kingdom of blocks. This collection of verses preserves that fleeting, marvelous perspective with startling clarity.

The Earthly Paradise: A Poem (Part II)
William Morris
The golden promise of eternal youth and love shimmers against the inevitable, quiet encroachment of mortality. These tales explore the fragile boundary between the dreams we chase and the reality of our own fading lives.

Candida
Bernard Shaw
A charismatic clergyman’s orderly world is upended when a young, destitute poet challenges him for his wife’s affection, forcing a confrontation between domestic comfort and the unsettling truth of love.

Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies
Samuel Johnson
This scholarly collection offers a rigorous, often bracing, look at the moral and structural mechanics of Shakespeare’s most significant tragedies. It serves as a masterclass in eighteenth-century literary criticism, balancing deep personal engagement with the cold precision of an analytical mind.

The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers
Steele, Richard, Sir
The Spectator is a mirror held up to the manners, whims, and quiet virtues of early eighteenth-century England. It finds the extraordinary in the ordinary, turning a simple country squire into an enduring icon of English literature.