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British Literature — page 26

1,262 public-domain british literature books, summarised. Page 26 of 27.

English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History: Designed as a Manual of Instruction

Henry Coppée

English literature is more than a collection of poems and novels; it is a vital, living record of the national spirit across the centuries. This manual maps the essential connection between the written word and the unfolding history of the English people.

British Literature7 min read

Something New

P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse

A stolen Egyptian scarab, a bumbling aristocrat, and a pair of resourceful Americans collide in a sprawling English country house, setting off a chain of delightfully chaotic mishaps.

British Literature6 min read

The Market-Place

Harold Frederic

A self-made financier rises from obscurity to the heights of English society, only to find that his hard-won, predatory triumph leaves him adrift in a world of aristocratic manners he does not fully understand.

British Literature6 min read

Richard Steele: Edited, with an Introduction and Notes by G. A. Aitken

Steele, Richard, Sir

A life lived in the public eye, marked by both literary triumph and financial ruin, defines the enduring legacy of a celebrated eighteenth-century wit and playwright.

British Literature6 min read

The Complete Works of Richard Crashaw, Volume II

Richard Crashaw

This collection preserves the Latin and Greek verse of a seventeenth-century poet, offering a window into the intellectual and spiritual landscape of a mind caught between two worlds. It serves as a scholarly recovery of a forgotten tradition, gathering the work of a writer who moved from the rigorous Protestantism…

British Literature5 min read

Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady

Samuel Richardson

A virtuous young woman is ensnared in a web of sophisticated cruelty, struggling to preserve her integrity against a relentless libertine who views her very resistance as a challenge to his own mastery.

British Literature6 min read

Gods of Modern Grub Street: Impressions of Contemporary Authors

Arthur St. John Adcock

These profiles capture the essence of a generation, mapping the creative lives of the authors who defined the early twentieth-century literary landscape.

British Literature6 min read

Pelham

Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron

High fashion, political ambition, and dark underworld crime intersect in this glittering tale of a nineteenth-century dandy who hides sharp intellect beneath an outrageous, velvet-trimmed exterior.

British Literature7 min read

The Fatal Dowry

Philip Massinger

A tragic collision of honor and obsession, this play charts the ruin of a young man caught between his duty to a benefactor and the betrayal of his marriage. It is a work of dark, forensic intensity, where the courtroom serves as both stage and final judgment.

British Literature6 min read

Lancelot of the Laik: A Scottish Metrical Romance (About 1490-1500 A. D.)

Unknown

This Scottish metrical romance explores the intersection of courtly love, knightly duty, and the tempering influence of wisdom. It captures a pivotal moment in the Arthurian cycle through the lens of a nameless, humble narrator.

British Literature6 min read

Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie

This work captures the fragile, bittersweet boundary between the boundless imagination of childhood and the irreversible finality of growing up. It invites readers into a twilight realm where the impossible is ordinary and the heart’s deepest desires are perpetually at risk of being left behind.

British Literature6 min read

The Adventures of Hugh Trevor

Thomas Holcroft

A searching mind ventures into eighteenth-century society, only to find corruption in every profession and virtue where least expected.

British Literature9 min read

The Day's Work

Rudyard Kipling

The work of man—the labor of machines, the duty of soldiers, and the quiet precision of the technical mind—is the beating heart of these stories. This collection captures the early industrial age, where the rhythm of the machine and the rhythm of the human soul are inextricably bound.

British Literature6 min read

The Fortunes of Nigel

Walter Scott

A young Scottish noble travels to the Jacobean court to claim a crown debt, only to get dragged into duel-riddled streets, sinister deceptions, and the lawless sanctuary of London's underworld.

British Literature10 min read

Thoughts on the Present Discontents, and Speeches

Edmund Burke

The preservation of a stable government requires a vigilant public, yet such vigilance must be grounded in the careful maintenance of constitutional tradition rather than the reckless pursuit of speculative innovation.

British Literature7 min read

Arden of Feversham

Unknown

A scheming wife, her ambitious lover, and a band of hired killers turn a quiet Kentish estate into a deadly, chaotic arena where greed and betrayal clash in domestic murder.

British Literature6 min read

Lucretia

Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron

A dark lineage of ambition transforms early intellect into a calculating poisoner whose ruthless plotting ensnares a whole network of unsuspecting lives.

British Literature8 min read

The Comic Almanack, Volume 1: An Ephemeris in Jest and Earnest, Containing Merry Tales, Humerous Poetry, Quips, and Oddities

William Makepeace Thackeray

Satire wears the robes of a serious calendar in a bustling nineteenth-century metropolis, turning civic pomposity and social climbing into a year-round farce.

British Literature8 min read

The Old Man in the Corner

Orczy, Emmuska Orczy, Baroness

The man in the corner possesses a singular, unsettling genius for unraveling crimes that have utterly baffled the police. He sits in his solitary café nook, his long, bony fingers incessantly tying and untying knots in a piece of string as he dismantles the world's most impenetrable mysteries.

British Literature6 min read

Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope

An exhaustive directory mapping the contents, structures, and editorial variations across multiple volumes of neoclassical verse, classical translations, and personal correspondence.

British Literature5 min read

Memoirs of Emma Courtney

Mary Hays

A passionate, intellect-driven young woman refuses to censor her desires, pursuing an emotionally distant philosopher and challenging the social conventions that trap female intelligence and feeling.

British Literature6 min read

Shakespeare's play of the Merchant of Venice: Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre, with Historical and Explanatory Notes by Charles Kean, F.S.A

William Shakespeare

A merchant hazards his life on a boundlessly risky loan to finance his friend's courtship, triggering a legal battle where love, law, and deep prejudice collide.

British Literature7 min read

A Prisoner in Fairyland (The Book That 'Uncle Paul' Wrote)

Algernon Blackwood

A middle-aged man on the brink of financial retirement stumbles into an enchanting realm where childhood imagination and starlight rebuild the world.

British Literature6 min read

Aaron's Rod

D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

A disillusioned English miner walks out on his family on Christmas Eve, carrying only his flute and a restless determination to discover what a man becomes when he sheds every obligation.

British Literature7 min read

Robin Linnet

E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

A golden youth's effortless world of Cambridge banter and Mayfair revelry collapses when the First World War demands that he and his circle trade their sheltered privileges for the harsh realities of service.

British Literature6 min read

Amy Foster

Joseph Conrad

A castaway washes up on a suspicious English coast, where a simple village girl offers him bread and eventually her heart, until fear dismantles their fragile world.

British Literature6 min read

He Knew He Was Right

Anthony Trollope

A prosperous young husband allows a groundless suspicion of his wife’s fidelity to curdle into clinical madness, destroying his home, his health, and his mind in an obsessive quest to force her submission.

British Literature11 min read

William Wycherley [Four Plays]

William Wycherley

Behind the polite veneer of Restoration society lies a ruthless marketplace where affection is a commodity, marriage is a transaction, and reputation is merely a mask for greed and desire.

British Literature9 min read

Anna of the Five Towns

Arnold Bennett

In a bleak industrial corner of Staffordshire, a young woman's sudden, massive inheritance exposes the suffocating weight of domestic tyranny, religious hypocrisy, and provincial expectation.

British Literature6 min read

Poems

Matthew Arnold

A quiet, searching mind surveys classical myths, modern heartbreaks, and the industrial rush of the nineteenth century, seeking a calm center in a world that has lost its moorings.

British Literature6 min read

Tom Brown at Rugby

Thomas Hughes

A spirited boy leaves his rustic home for Rugby School, where he must navigate brutal hazing, fierce athletics, and his own reckless impulses to discover what it truly means to be a man of character.

British Literature7 min read

Actions and reactions

Rudyard Kipling

A wounded American tycoon finds healing in an old English manor, while across the world, airships brave arctic gales and a hive of bees collapses under a strange delusion.

British Literature6 min read

Almayer's Folly: A Story of an Eastern River

Joseph Conrad

Driven by dreams of European wealth that rot alongside his decaying river mansion, a Dutch trader in Borneo unravels as his Malay-English daughter chooses her mother’s heritage over his grand ambitions.

British Literature6 min read

The Arte of English Poesie

George Puttenham

A detailed guide to craft and courtly decorum, this Tudor handbook shapes the vernacular tongue into an instrument of royal service, persuasive rhetoric, and geometric artistry.

British Literature6 min read

The Stark Munro Letters: Being series of twelve letters written by J. Stark Munro, M.B., to his friend and former fellow-student, Herbert Swanborough, of Lowell, Massachusetts, during the years 1881-1884

Arthur Conan Doyle

A young British physician struggles through poverty, professional betrayal, and profound crisis of faith while attempting to establish his independent medical practice.

British Literature6 min read

Mistress and Maid: A Household Story

Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

A quiet, deeply human Victorian story, Mistress and Maid examines class, loyalty, and personal endurance through the interwoven lives of three impoverished gentgewomen and their sturdy young servant.

British Literature6 min read

The Firm of Girdlestone

Arthur Conan Doyle

A father and son push their respectable London trading firm into fraud, desperation, and violence, setting a trap around a young heiress that only her lover and a band of unlikely allies can hope to shatter.

British Literature7 min read

The Green Flag, and Other Stories of War and Sport

Arthur Conan Doyle

A rogue pirate playing governor, an Irish mutineer who dies for a rebel flag, and a timid medical student stepping into a bloody prize-fight.

British Literature7 min read

The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Old Time English

Unknown

A chilling fog drifts over damp railway cuttings, shadowy attics, and dark suburban alleyways. The supernatural and the sinister meet at every turn, pulling unsuspecting mortals into web-like mysteries.

British Literature6 min read

Vacation Rambles

Thomas Hughes

Observe the quiet grace of a landscape, the stubborn dignity of ordinary working people, and the unforced warmth of an traveler writing home.

British Literature7 min read

Indiscretions of Archie

P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse

A penniless British ex-officer marries a wealthy American heiress on a whim, only to find that winning her formidable father’s affection requires an endless series of improbable, chaotic rescues.

British Literature6 min read

The Hardy Country: Literary landmarks of the Wessex Novels

Charles G. (Charles George) Harper

Deeply rooted in the Dorsetshire countryside, this journey traces the real-world landscapes, ancient monuments, and quiet villages that inspired the fictional topography of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex novels.

British Literature8 min read

The Lay of Havelok the Dane

Unknown

Betrayed in youth, a disinherited prince is raised as a humble scullion until his luminous noble lineage, extraordinary strength, and a destined royal marriage propel him to reclaim two kingdoms.

British Literature7 min read

The Works of Samuel Johnson, in Sixteen Volumes. Volume 04

Samuel Johnson

Human life is ruined far more by quiet self-deception and social vanity than by grand, catastrophic vices. These periodic essays dissect our everyday absurdities with unsparing clarity and quiet moral wisdom.

British Literature7 min read

When Ghost Meets Ghost

William De Morgan

A dark mistake separates twin sisters in youth, sending their lives down radically different paths until a chance encounter brings them together in old age.

British Literature11 min read

Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut

Wace

A world of ancient kings, treacherous usurpers, and legendary heroes comes vividly to life through the lens of a medieval court poet.

British Literature6 min read

Impressions of Theophrastus Such

George Eliot

An aging, observant bachelor turns his analytical eye upon himself and the minor absurdities of his contemporaries, offering a quiet examination of vanity, pedantry, and human self-deception.

British Literature7 min read

The Research Magnificent

H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

A privileged young idealist spends his life striving to transcend human weakness, only to learn that noble principles cannot easily tame the chaos of real love, violence, and social upheaval.

British Literature7 min read