Free summaries
British Literature — page 33
6,377 public-domain british literature books, summarised. Page 33 of 133.
The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
A quiet, restrained woman marries a domineering commercial magnate, only to find her awakening sense of independence brought into sharp collision with his obsessive, possessive control.
Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 1 (of 2)
Charles Lever
A high-stakes drama of financial ambition and aristocratic decay, where Ireland's wealth and prestige are quietly traded away in panelled backrooms.
Our Stage and Its Critics: By "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
Edward Fordham Spence
A sharp critic looks at the British theater and sees a magnificent cultural engine routinely sabotaged by commercial greed and intellectual laziness. Behind the glamour of the footlights, the stage remains burdened by timid managers, vanity-driven staging, and an audience that prefers easy distraction to hard thought.
The Altar of the Dead
Henry James
When an aging bachelor builds a private temple of candlelight to honor his departed loved ones, he accidentally creates a sacred haven for another grieving soul—only to discover that their shared sanctuary rests on a devastating shared past.
A Dissertation upon Roast Pig
Charles Lamb
A playful origin myth gives way to an ecstatic, tongue-in-cheek ode on the unmatched culinary perfection of young roasted swine.
The Merry Wives of Windsor
William Shakespeare
A penniless knight attempts to swindle two quick-witted provincial wives, only to be repeatedly outsmarted and publicly humiliated by them in a lively English town.
Wager of Battle: A Tale of Saxon Slavery in Sherwood Forest
Henry William Herbert
A hunted stag breaks from the green coverts of Sherwood, unleashing a chain of violence, loss, and unyielding resistance across Twelfth-Century England.
A Child's Garden of Verses
Robert Louis Stevenson
Through a child's watchful eyes, the quiet garden, the bedroom carpet, and the dark stairwell stretch out into uncharted oceans and glowing, distant empires.
Evan Harrington
George Meredith
A young man of gentle breeding attempts to erase his origin as the son of a provincial tailor, caught between his own prickly honor and his sisters' frantic social ambition.
The Land of Heart's Desire
W. B. (William Butler) Yeats
A young bride in eighteenth-century Ireland finds herself torn between the quiet safety of domestic love and the alluring, dangerous freedom of the fairy realm.
The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay
Maurice Hewlett
A king’s divided nature turns his greatest triumphs into ashes, leaving the woman who loves him to pay the ultimate price.
The post-girl
Edward Charles Booth
An urban composer and an orphaned village post-girl weather scandal, pride, and local eccentricities in a windswept Yorkshire community.
The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu
Sax Rohmer
A shadowy mastermind returns from the grave to strike at the heart of the British Empire, leaving a trail of unnatural deaths and terrifying global conspiracies in his wake.
The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories
George MacDonald
An unvisited world yields its deepest magic through loss, gravity, and the quiet weight of wonder.
Papers from Lilliput
J. B. (John Boynton) Priestley
A gentle, inquisitive intelligence peers out from behind every line, transforming life's small absurdities into warm, meditative art.
Saint Joan
Bernard Shaw
This play dramatizes the life and death of a revolutionary peasant girl whose singular conviction changed the course of history, only to face a brutal, systematic destruction by the very institutions she sought to serve.
The Golden Legend
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A dying prince accepts a farm girl's offer to lay down her life for his cure, setting off a spiritual journey across medieval Europe where demon, saint, and mortal contend for a single soul. <Image alt="Illustration of a medieval noblewoman holding a golden vessel" caption="Medieval drama of sacrifice and grace"…
The Green Carnation
Robert Hichens
A sharp satire of Victorian aestheticism, this parody captures two dandyish intellectuals spinning endless paradoxes across London drawing rooms and country gardens.
The Hampdenshire Wonder
J. D. (John Davys) Beresford
An ordinary English village faces an intellectual catastrophe when a child is born with a mind so vast that human knowledge can neither contain nor comprehend it.
The Mysteries of London, v. 2/4
George W. M. (George William MacArthur) Reynolds
A sprawling, high-octane Victorian melodrama cuts between the gleaming drawing rooms of Mayfair and the filthy, lightless cellars of London's underworld, pitting total corruption against uncompromising virtue.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare
When young lovers escape rigorous human laws by fleeing into an enchanted forest, they discover that nature and magic possess their own volatile, unpredictable rules.
Beyond the City
Arthur Conan Doyle
Three new households settle into a suburban cul-de-sac, where feminist iconoclasm, quiet middle-class domesticity, and financial peril collide in Arthur Conan Doyle’s spirited comedy of Victorian manners and neighborhood ties.
Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady
Samuel Richardson
Clarissa Harlowe stands in the balance between her family’s ruthless social ambition and a manipulative libertine’s dark schemes. Her story becomes a desperate struggle to preserve her personal integrity against a world intent on breaking her.
Deep Waters
W. W. (William Wymark) Jacobs
Scheming dockworkers, scheming wives, and cunning old tars maneuver through the lower-class drawing rooms and muddy Thames wharves of Edwardian England, turning every domestic spat, unpaid bar tab, and stray piece of property into a battle of wits.
If Winter Comes
A. S. M. (Arthur Stuart-Menteth) Hutchinson
A gentle, reflective man who tries to understand everyone’s point of view finds his tolerance turned against him when personal scandal and wartime hysteria converge.
Puck of Pook's Hill
Rudyard Kipling
A ancient land whispers its memories when two Sussex children accidentally summon the oldest magic in Britain.
Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood
George MacDonald
A boy’s journey toward maturity unfolds in the harsh, beautiful landscape of a Scottish parish, where childhood joys and sorrows serve as the crucible for his developing soul.
The Great Return
Arthur Machen
A quiet Welsh coastal town is suddenly transformed when a forgotten medieval legend manifests as a tangible, holy reality, bringing unexpected physical healing and profound spiritual peace to its divided community.
The Starling: A Scottish Story
Norman Macleod
A small Scottish village turns upside down when an old soldier's pet bird speaks a few innocent phrases on a Sunday morning, setting a village elder, a rigid minister, and a town outcast on a collision course over faith and mercy.
Slaves of Freedom
Coningsby Dawson
A man can surrender his freedom to win a woman, but he cannot force a woman who fears love to surrender hers.
The Fortunes of Glencore
Charles Lever
A proud Irish peer casts off his family in a cloud of suspicion, driving his isolated son and enigmatic wife across Europe in search of truth, redemption, and a name.
When Knighthood Was in Flower
Charles Major
A willful princess and an ambitious commoner clash, fall in love, and defy the terrifying authority of King Henry VIII to claim their own fate.
The works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 13
John Dryden
A great writer’s late-career masterpiece often lies in how he honors the masters who came before him. Here, an aging poet turns his fierce intelligence and mature craft toward capturing the razor-sharp wit and quiet beauty of classical Rome.
Arthur O'Leary: His Wanderings And Ponderings In Many Lands
Charles Lever
A roving Irishman drifts across nineteenth-century Europe, sampling local life, listening to the tragic or absurd stories of strangers, and observing human vanity with detached, ironic amusement.
Dryden's Palamon and Arcite
John Dryden
Two imprisoned cousins fall instantly in love with the same captive princess, turning their lifelong brotherhood into an unrelenting duel of honor, destiny, and martial glory.
Red Eve
H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard
In 14th-century England, a young woman's forbidden love becomes entangled with war, deadly rivalries, and the march of the Black Death.
English and Scottish Ballads, Volume V
Unknown
A broad collection of folk ballads captures the legendary exploits, violent skirmishes, and merry camaraderie of England’s most famous greenwood outlaw and his forest companions.
The Unbearable Bassington
Saki
A glittering, sharp-edged satire of Edwardian society that turns without warning into a heartbreaking tragedy of youth wasted and love withheld.
Experience
Catherine (Catherine M.) Cotton
A sunlit home in a dark world can be the sweetest comfort or the sharpest ache when war breaks in.
Hector Graeme
Evelyn Brentwood
A dark portrait of pride and military genius, showing how ambition and emotional blindness can destroy a brilliant career from within.
Jimbo: A Fantasy
Algernon Blackwood
An imaginative boy, struck down in a sudden accident, awakens inside a strange gothic dreamscape where his fear and his yearning for flight wage a battle for his soul.
My Path to Atheism
Annie Besant
A intellectual journey from devout Anglican faith to unyielding secularism shows how rigorous biblical scrutiny can dissolve long-held religious dogmas.
Nineteenth Century Questions
James Freeman Clarke
A collection of sharp mid-nineteenth-century essays dissects the friction between faith, literature, and social change, offering a calm, reasoned defense of human progress against dogmatism and intellectual excess.
The Luckiest Girl in the School
Angela Brazil
For an energetic slice of early twentieth-century schoolgirl life, look no further than this spirited story of friendship, athletic rivalry, and home-front determination.
The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, and Other Tales
Hannah More
A quiet shepherd sitting on a windswept plain, content with cold potatoes while he pays off a medical debt, sets the tone for a collection devoted to the power of ordinary moral choices.
Jill the Reckless
P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse
A bright, sweet-tempered young woman loses her fortune and her aristocratic fiancé, but her refusal to surrender to despair leads her straight to a theatrical life in New York.
The True-Born Englishman: A Satire
Daniel Defoe
An biting, brilliant attack on xenophobia, this verse satire dismantles the myth of national purity by exposing the chaotic, multi-ethnic roots of the English people.
Within the Tides: Tales
Joseph Conrad
In colonial settings, characters grapple with love, duty, and the consequences of their choices, revealing the complexities of human nature.