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British Literature — page 25
1,262 public-domain british literature books, summarised. Page 25 of 27.
Quotes and Images from Chesterfield's Letters to His Son
Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of
The world is an arena of social negotiation, and success belongs to those who master the subtle art of pleasing others while keeping their own counsel. To navigate this landscape, one must dress with care, speak with elegance, and above all, treat manners as the necessary varnish that makes merit shine.
In Mr. Knox's Country
E. Oe. (Edith Oenone) Somerville
In a world of crumbling manor houses and unpredictable hunts, a Resident Magistrate navigates the chaotic, witty, and often absurd social landscape of rural Ireland.
A Mad Love
Charlotte M. Brame
A young woman’s hidden marriage to an aristocrat is shattered by his powerful family, forcing her to trade her rural anonymity for the spotlight of fame and a tragic quest for vengeance.
Poems of Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
This collection captures the restless, visionary intensity of a poet whose work bridges the gap between the grounded realities of the natural world and the shimmering, often terrifying landscape of the human subconscious.
The Adventure of the Dying Detective
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sherlock Holmes lies on his deathbed, succumbing to a mysterious, contagious tropical disease. As his condition worsens, he summons Dr. Watson, setting in motion a desperate and dangerous plan to trap a ruthless killer.
The works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 04
John Dryden
These Restoration-era dramas and essays capture a world where honor, volatile romance, and the clash of empires are navigated through sharp wit and the sword’s edge.
Jane--Our Stranger: A Novel
Mary Borden
HOOK A wealthy American heiress marries into the stagnant, aristocratic decadence of Paris, only to discover that her husband’s world regards her—and her earnest, moral nature—as an incomprehensible stranger.
Mike
P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse
A gifted schoolboy cricketer finds his world disrupted by shifting loyalties and academic scrapes, ultimately discovering a profound sense of camaraderie in the most unlikely of places.
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 03
Robert Louis Stevenson
A collection of essays examining the lives of historical figures, this volume blends rigorous literary criticism with a singular, chilling work of short fiction. It explores how great minds shape their legacies through art, morality, and contradiction.
The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb
Charles Lamb
A life lived in the margins of genius, captured in the candid, witty, and deeply vulnerable letters of a man who found his greatest joy in books and his hardest trials in the care of his sister.
Songs of Travel, and Other Verses
Robert Louis Stevenson
The open road calls to the restless soul, promising adventure and danger, but it eventually leads the traveler to a quiet recognition of mortality and the enduring beauty of what we leave behind.
The Psalms of David: Imitated in the Language of the New Testament and Applied to the Christian State and Worship
Isaac Watts
By reimagining ancient Hebrew poetry through the lens of Christian experience, this work transforms traditional biblical verses into a bridge between Old Testament prophecy and New Testament devotion.
Mr. Punch's History of the Great War
Charles L. (Charles Larcom) Graves
The war is not a tragedy to be analyzed in the abstract, but a lived experience of endurance, humor, and quiet sacrifice observed through the lens of a national institution.
Parkhurst Boys, and Other Stories of School Life
Talbot Baines Reed
This collection captures the frantic, earnest, and often ridiculous spirit of late-Victorian schoolboy life. From the high-stakes tension of the football field to the absurdities of boarding school friendships, it offers a glimpse into a world governed by honor, ritual, and a fair amount of mischief.
The Strand Magazine, Vol. 27, No. 161, May 1904
Various
A rich treasury of Edwardian imagination, this collection blends the sharp deductions of Sherlock Holmes with tales of magical rugs, theatrical memoirs, and the curiosities of a changing world.
The World's Desire
Andrew Lang
An aging hero sets sail across a sea of ghosts to find the woman who was once the beauty of the world. He discovers that some desires are curses, and some loves are only meant to be found in death.
The Black Robe
Wilkie Collins
A man haunted by a past tragedy finds his quiet life dismantled by the calculated machinations of a shadowy priest. This is a story of how secrets and religious fervor erode the foundations of a marriage.
Some Diversions of a Man of Letters
Edmund Gosse
This collection of essays explores the evolution of English literature and the personal lives of its creators, bridging the gap between historical scholarship and the immediate, often painful, realities of the early twentieth century.
The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. - Volume 07: Historical and Political Tracts-Irish
Jonathan Swift
These collected tracts offer a searing, masterful examination of eighteenth-century Ireland, documenting the systematic economic and political strangulation of a nation by the whims of its neighbor.
Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall, Second Series
William Bottrell
This collection of West Cornish lore preserves the fading echoes of a world where ancient stone circles, hidden fairy folk, and local witches were as real as the salt air and the seasonal harvest.
The True History of Tom & Jerry
Pierce Egan
A whirlwind tour of Regency-era London, this narrative tracks the restless pursuit of pleasure through both the gilded parlors of the West End and the desperate, rowdy shadows of the East End.
The Beaux-Stratagem
George Farquhar
Two desperate gentlemen travel to the countryside to hunt for wealthy heiresses, only to discover that the most rewarding conquests are those of the heart and the spirit.
Trent's Last Case
E. C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
A brilliant investigator abandons his profession after a single, humbling case proves that even the sharpest intellect can be blind to the truth hidden in plain sight.
The Girls and I: A Veracious History
Mrs. Molesworth
A young boy navigating the complexities of a large family finds his life transformed by a lost piece of jewelry and the sudden, perilous illness of his youngest sister.
Webster & Tourneur
John Webster
The stage is a dark mirror for the corruption of the human soul, where brilliance and depravity walk hand in hand. These plays define a world where ambition, lust, and vengeance consume all they touch.
Blackthorn Farm
Arthur Applin
A young man faces ruin and a false conviction, setting off a desperate scramble for redemption across the wild moors of Dartmoor and the distant jungles of the Far East.
Cecilia
Fanny Burney
An orphan heiress navigating the traps of London high society must reconcile the heavy demands of her inheritance with the unpredictable stirrings of her own heart. This expansive novel charts a young woman’s struggle to maintain her integrity while surrounded by spendthrifts, social climbers, and the stifling…
Mugby Junction
Charles Dickens
A middle-aged man walks away from his orderly life, arriving at a lonely junction to find something he cannot name. This collection of linked tales captures the haunting, mechanical, and human rhythms of a changing industrial world.
The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century
William Lyon Phelps
Poetry in the early twentieth century stands at a crossroads, caught between the echoes of Victorian grandeur and the urgent, often jarring, arrival of the modern world. This guide illuminates the transition, charting the path from established masters to the burgeoning voices of a new, fractured era.
The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 2
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The critic’s eye is a lens that brings the vast architecture of English drama into focus, revealing how genius mirrors the shifting nature of the human mind. This collection captures the essential observations of a profound thinker on the craft of his greatest predecessors.
Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold
These essays map the intellectual landscape of the Victorian era, arguing that a life of quiet reflection and critical judgment is the only remedy for a society obsessed with material progress.
The Golden Age
Kenneth Grahame
The boundaries between a child's imaginative dominion and the indifferent, often incomprehensible world of adults form a fragile borderland of wonder and resentment. In these quiet, sun-drenched episodes, the sharp divide between the "Olympians"—the tall, dull, and authority-wielding grown-ups—and the vibrant,…
The Old English Baron: a Gothic Story
Clara Reeve
A dispossessed youth, hidden in plain sight, seeks to reclaim his noble heritage from a usurping kinsman. This foundational Gothic tale masterfully blends moral instruction with the unsettling atmosphere of a haunted ancestral home.
Across the Plains, with Other Memories and Essays
Robert Louis Stevenson
The vast, indifferent beauty of the American plains and the quiet dignity of the human struggle define this collection of essays, where the author finds wonder in the most unlikely of places.
Sejanus: His Fall
Ben Jonson
Power is a fragile mask, and the pursuit of it inevitably invites a catastrophic collapse. This historical tragedy strips away the veneer of Roman grandeur to reveal the grinding machinery of ambition and betrayal.
The Forsyte saga, Volume 3 : Awakening
John Galsworthy
A sweeping, melancholic chronicle of a vanishing world, this narrative captures the quiet, inexorable collision between the rigid, possessive values of a Victorian patriarch and the restless, shifting spirit of a modern generation.
Select Poems of Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray
Elegance and melancholy define these verses, where the weight of history and the inevitability of death are held in perfect, rhythmic balance. A quiet mastery of language transforms the ordinary into the sublime, inviting readers to linger in the hushed spaces between life and memory.
Hide and Seek
Wilkie Collins
A tender, intricately plotted examination of human isolation, this novel follows the lives of two social outcasts—a young woman born deaf and a brooding, nomadic traveler—whose paths converge through a web of long-held secrets.
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
George Gissing
A life of grinding literary labor ends in the quiet, reflective twilight of a modest country home. This meditative journal captures the hard-won peace of a man who has finally escaped the crushing weight of poverty.
The works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 12
John Dryden
The twelfth volume of this monumental collection serves as a vibrant gateway into the classical and medieval worlds, reimagined through the singular sensibility of one of England’s most formidable poets. It is an expansive assembly of translation, where the ancient voices of Homer, Ovid, Lucretius, and Horace are…
Imaginations and Reveries
George William Russell
A collection of essays and short tales exploring the tension between the artist’s inner life and the urgent practical demands of a changing Irish nation.
Anima Poetæ
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
To witness a brilliant, restless mind in the act of catching its own reflection is to see the very mechanics of thought laid bare. These private pages reveal the intimate laboratory of a master of introspection.
In a Glass Darkly, v. 1/3
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
A collection of chilling, supernatural case studies, these tales follow a physician’s investigation into the harrowing psychological and spiritual torments of the damned.
The Harlot's Progress (1733), The Rake's Progress (Ms., ca. 1778-1780)
Theophilus Cibber
These two eighteenth-century theatrical pieces transform iconic moralizing engravings into lively, song-filled spectacles that trace the rapid ruin of a young woman and a young man in London.
Three John Silence Stories
Algernon Blackwood
HOOK A physician of the occult investigates phenomena beyond the reach of conventional science, confronting ancient forces that linger in the shadows of the modern world.
The Battle of Life: A Love Story
Charles Dickens
In the quiet shadow of an old English battlefield, a father’s cynicism and a sister’s hidden sacrifice collide, revealing that the most enduring struggles are those fought within the human heart.
The High History of the Holy Graal
Sebastian Evans
This high-medieval romance weaves a tapestry of chivalry and spiritual yearning, following a quest for the Holy Grail that tests the limits of knightly virtue and endurance. It presents a world where the boundary between the physical and the metaphysical is thin, and where a single unanswered question can doom a…
Becket and other plays
Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron
This collection of dramas explores the heavy toll of duty, the volatility of human affection, and the collision between personal conviction and the rigid demands of the state.