Free summaries
British Literature — page 43
6,377 public-domain british literature books, summarised. Page 43 of 133.
The Man Who Was Good
Leonard Merrick
A woman’s devotion to an actor leads her into a life of abandonment and hardship, where she must navigate the precarious dignity of those who earn their own way. In a world of fleeting opportunities, she discovers that the past is a ghost that refuses to be buried.
The Snare
Rafael Sabatini
A reckless soldier’s drunken indiscretion spirals into a web of political espionage and murder, testing the limits of honor during the brutal Peninsula War.
Coelebs In Search of a Wife
Hannah More
The search for a companion is a journey not of the heart alone, but of the spirit. True compatibility requires a shared foundation of faith and character, tested by the trials of everyday life.
Michael
E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
The heavy, awkward Michael Comber seeks a life of music and independence, only to find his path shattered by the brutal collision of national loyalties during the First World War.
Oracles from the Poets: A Fanciful Diversion for the Drawing Room
Unknown
A parlor game of chance becomes a literary séance, inviting friends to summon the muses through a curated, interactive map of the English poetic tradition.
The First and the Last: A Drama in Three Scenes
John Galsworthy
A desperate confession, a brother’s cold ambition, and a final act of tragic defiance collide in this stark, high-stakes drama. It is a haunting exploration of how the law, when wielded by the rigid, can leave no room for the broken.
The Head of the House of Coombe
Frances Hodgson Burnett
London in the years before the Great War is a glittering facade, a world of rigid social codes and profound human neglect. This narrative explores the intersection of a shallow, beautiful socialite and the quiet, observant daughter she willfully ignores.
The Irrational Knot: Being the Second Novel of His Nonage
Bernard Shaw
An engineer and an aristocratic woman attempt to bridge their vast social divide through marriage, only to find that their differing values turn their union into an impossible, tangled calculation.
Two maiden aunts
Mary H. (Mary Harriette) Debenham
Two young sisters suddenly find themselves the guardians of an orphaned nephew, struggling to reconcile their own youth with the immense responsibility of raising a gentleman in a changing world.
Henry Brocken: His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance
Walter De la Mare
The traveler leaves the familiar world behind to wander through the landscape of literature, where the boundaries between memory, dream, and the printed page dissolve into a single, shifting horizon.
The Angel
Guy Thorne
A man transformed by a celestial encounter challenges the materialist grip of London, only to find that his earthly mission concludes in a mystery beyond human explanation.
The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck: a romance
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
This historical romance traces the ill-fated crusade of a young man who claims to be the lost Duke of York, exploring the heavy toll of royal ambition on the human heart.
The Incomplete Amorist
E. (Edith) Nesbit
The heart is a fickle instrument, often tuned to the melody of one's own vanity until a genuine, unbidden emotion strikes a discordant note. This story follows the quiet unraveling of a man who mistakes the performance of love for the thing itself.
The Ned M'Keown Stories: Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of
William Carleton
This collection of tales seeks to dismantle the long-standing caricature of the Irish peasant as a bumbling, grotesque buffoon, offering instead an intimate look at the gravity, intellect, and humanity behind the brogue.
The Passion for Life
Joseph Hocking
A man facing a terminal diagnosis finds unexpected purpose in a quiet Cornish village, where he stumbles upon a dangerous conspiracy that forces him to choose between a fading life and a desperate act of patriotism.
The Two Noble Kinsmen
William Shakespeare
Two noble cousins, bonded by blood and friendship, find their lives shattered when both fall in love with the same woman. Their rivalry transforms from a noble competition into a tragic fight for survival.
A Woman-Hater
Charles Reade
A woman’s search for her past intersects with a singer’s ascent and a gentleman’s skepticism in this expansive, spirited Victorian novel. It explores the social and professional limitations placed upon women while weaving a complex tapestry of romantic longing and personal redemption.
Charlotte's Inheritance
M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon
A woman’s survival becomes a race against a calculated, murderous conspiracy. This Victorian drama weaves a chilling web of inheritance, poisoning, and the desperate search for redemption.
Fathers of Men
E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
HOOK A raw, defiant boy from a rough background struggles to survive the rigid social hierarchy of an English boarding school, where his solitary nature clashes with the expectations of his masters and peers.
Measure for Measure
William Shakespeare
A hypocritical judge demands a woman’s virtue as the price for her brother’s life. This gripping drama explores the dangerous intersection of power, desire, and the law.
Preston Fight
William Harrison Ainsworth
The Jacobite cause is a portrait of misplaced devotion, where the chivalry of noble lords clashes against the cold, tactical realities of a doomed rebellion. It is a story of honor, sacrifice, and the heavy price of loyalty to a fallen crown.
The Coryston Family: A Novel
Ward, Humphry, Mrs.
The Coryston family occupies a precarious position at the center of English social and political upheaval. Caught between the iron will of a matriarch and the radical impulses of her children, they must navigate the fraying ties of tradition, class, and conscience.
The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886
Various
This Victorian miscellany serves as a window into the moral, domestic, and creative expectations placed upon young women of the late nineteenth century.
The Jolliest Term on Record: A Story of School Life
Angela Brazil
Two sisters navigate the trials and triumphs of a new boarding school, finding that even ordinary country life holds hidden mysteries, long-held secrets, and the promise of lasting adventure.
The Journal to Eliza and Various letters by Laurence Sterne and Elizabeth Draper
Laurence Sterne
A man’s final, feverish attempts to hold onto a woman who has slipped across the ocean, captured in the intimate, unvarnished prose of private correspondence.
The Rolliad, in Two Parts: Probationary Odes for the Laureatship & Political Eclogues
Richard Tickell
A biting collection of verse and prose, this satirical treasury exposes the political theater, sycophancy, and moral compromises of the British government during the premiership of William Pitt the Younger.
The Seven Seas
Rudyard Kipling
This collection of verse captures the pulse of an expanding world, mapping the vast, interconnected reach of a maritime empire through the eyes of the engineers, soldiers, and sailors who kept its machinery running.
Alas! A Novel
Rhoda Broughton
A man finds his long-held, joyless engagement crumbling just as he meets a woman whose own shadowed past demands a terrifying, total leap of faith.
Dodo: A Detail of the Day. Volumes 1 and 2
E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
A vibrant, socially agile young woman navigates the suffocating expectations of Victorian high society, struggling to balance her craving for independence with the heavy demands of love, loyalty, and her own restless, impulsive nature.
Essays in Literature and History
James Anthony Froude
To examine the past with honesty, one must abandon the comfort of easy moralizing and instead confront the messy, often contradictory reality of human experience. These essays invite readers to abandon intellectual safety for a more rigorous encounter with history and belief.
For the Faith: A Story of the Young Pioneers of Reformation in Oxford
Evelyn Everett-Green
This historical narrative follows a group of young scholars in Tudor-era Oxford, caught between their intellectual hunger for the Reformation’s new ideas and the lethal machinery of the Church. It is a story of internal conflict, the high cost of conscience, and the struggle to remain true to one's convictions when…
![Cover of Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896]](https://cdn.myebooksbuy.com/c/musa-pedestris-three-centuries-of-canting-songs-and-slang-rhymes-1536.webp)
Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896]
John Stephen Farmer
From the shadows of the seventeenth-century underworld to the lively music halls of the late Victorian era, this collection preserves the defiant, rhythmic argot of Britain’s marginalized classes.
Stories By English Authors: France (Selected by Scribners)
Unknown
From the biting chill of medieval Paris to the sun-drenched, doomed orchards of the Franco-Prussian War, these stories capture the peril, romance, and sudden shadows of French life.
The Admiral: A Romance of Nelson in the Year of the Nile
Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen
The life of a naval icon is reimagined through the loyal, observant eyes of those who stood closest to him during the pivotal year of 1798. This narrative captures the intersection of great historical strategy and the intensely human frailties of a legendary leader.
The Mystery of 31 New Inn
R. Austin (Richard Austin) Freeman
A medical practitioner inadvertently stumbles into a high-stakes conspiracy involving a man held captive by a mysterious, chemically-induced illness. This intricate puzzle demands the cold, analytical brilliance of a physician-detective to unravel.
Lying Prophets: A Novel
Eden Phillpotts
In a remote Cornish fishing village, a young woman’s search for identity clashes with the crushing religious fanaticism of her father. This atmospheric drama captures the tension between natural desire and the rigid, often hypocritical, morality of an isolated community.
Mr Punch's Pocket Ibsen - A Collection of Some of the Master's Best Known Dramas
F. Anstey
This collection of sharp-witted parodies playfully dismantles the brooding intensity of Victorian-era drama, inviting readers to laugh at the very tropes that once defined high-minded European theater.
Much Ado about Nothing
William Shakespeare
Two sharp-witted bachelors battle their own cynicism to find love, while a young bride faces a ruinous scandal born of a malicious lie. This enduring comedy balances biting humor with a dark, sudden turn toward tragedy.
Selections from the Prose Writings of John Henry Cardinal Newman: For the Use of Schools
John Henry Newman
These selections offer a rare, intimate encounter with one of the nineteenth century’s most luminous minds, blending historical portraiture, theological reflection, and educational philosophy into a singular, enduring voice.
The Lonely Stronghold
Reynolds, Baillie, Mrs.
A young woman accepts a mysterious job at a remote, ancient fortress, only to find herself ensnared in the complex psychological games of two enigmatic brothers.
The Tempting of Tavernake
E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
A solitary, rigid Englishman finds his orderly life shattered when he becomes the guardian of a mysterious, desperate woman, leading him into a web of international intrigue and moral discovery.
Unravelled Knots
Orczy, Emmuska Orczy, Baroness
An eccentric, string-twisting recluse solves the most baffling criminal mysteries of his day from the quiet isolation of a corner table in a London teashop.
Wulf the Saxon: A Story of the Norman Conquest
G. A. (George Alfred) Henty
This historical narrative follows a young Saxon thane caught in the turbulent clash of cultures during the Norman Conquest, charting his journey from loyal page to a man navigating a transformed England.
Mrs. Falchion, Complete
Gilbert Parker
This novel follows the collision of a woman with a hidden past and the men who are haunted by their own mistakes. It is a story of how a single, irrevocable act can ripple through a life, leaving only the choice of how to carry the weight.
The children of Dickens
Charles Dickens
The children of Dickens serve as our guides through the labyrinth of Victorian London, where the boundary between harsh reality and magical storytelling dissolves into the wonder of a child’s imagination.
The Lion's Share
Arnold Bennett
A young woman inherits a fortune and abandons her stifling life to claim the world as her own, navigating the shifting landscape of early twentieth-century freedom.
The Praise of Shakespeare: An English Anthology
Unknown
This collection gathers centuries of literary reflection, serving as a cumulative testament to the enduring stature of England’s most celebrated poet. By assembling diverse voices—from contemporary tributes to Victorian critique—the work maps the evolution of a reputation that has defined the English-speaking world.
The Secret of the Tower
Anthony Hope
The quiet of a village masks a web of secrets, and a soldier’s return from the Great War brings with it not peace, but a complex, moral game of cat and mouse.