Free summaries
British Literature — page 45
6,377 public-domain british literature books, summarised. Page 45 of 133.
Angel: A sketch in Indian ink
B. M. (Bithia Mary) Croker
A hot season in the Indian plains brings out secrets and sudden shifts of heart in a small circle of British officers and their wives.
Between the Larch-woods and the Weir
Flora Klickmann
A gentle wartime sanctuary on the steep hills of the Wye Valley, where a weary London editor finds sanity and humor among larch-woods, wild birds, and domestic misadventures.
David Blaize and the Blue Door
E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
A boy uses a wooden partridge’s pin-leg to stay awake, finds a secret door beneath his pillow, and enters a wild, absurd nocturnal wonderland.
Hugh Walpole: An Appreciation
Joseph Hergesheimer
An appreciative study of Hugh Walpole’s fiction argues that true creative literature requires both external realism and internal spiritual vision, celebrating an author who captures life's underlying magic.
Johnny Ludlow, Fifth Series
Wood, Henry, Mrs.
A quiet observer moves through provincial England and seaside exile, gathering tales of domestic friction, mysterious thefts, and ghostly anxieties that haunt ordinary lives.
Merkland
Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
A quiet Scottish parish hides an eighteen-year-old murder that broke two families, drove an innocent heir into exile, and left a silent culprit praying for a redemption he cannot buy.
Poems of Arthur Hugh Clough
Arthur Hugh Clough
Beliefs falter and certainty dissolves, yet life moves forward through the daily necessity of choice, work, and honest, unpretentious human connection.
Pomander Walk
Louis Napoleon Parker
Set in a tranquil riverfront enclave, this Regency romance explores how old secrets, eccentric neighbors, and rekindled flames reshape a quiet London street.
The Bab Ballads, with Which Are Included Songs of a Savoyard
W. S. (William Schwenck) Gilbert
In a world where pomposity reigns supreme, logical absurdity becomes the only sensible response.
The Herd Boy and His Hermit
Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge
A young herd boy's journey to reclaim his noble birthright during the Wars of the Roses.
The Household of Sir Thomas More
Anne Manning
A devoted daughter chronicles the warmth, intellectual brilliance, and tragic downfall of her father as his unyielding conscience brings him into fatal conflict with his King.
The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893: An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr
Various
A varied showcase of late-Victorian popular writing, this issue balances sharp fiction, stage memoirs, and casual editorial banter with effortless readability.
The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne, 1636?-1674, from the original manuscripts
Thomas Traherne
A lost seventeenth-century visionary reclaims the divine light of early childhood, urging a fallen world to remember its original innocence.
The windfairies, and other tales
Mary De Morgan
Magic carries a quiet, exacting tax: true gifts require faithful keeping, selflessness exacts an ultimate cost, and shallow vanity turns every blessing sour.
The Works of Thomas Hood
Thomas Hood
A brilliant mix of slapstick, social observation, and verbal dexterity turns the absurdities of nineteenth-century English life into an unsparingly funny, unexpectedly tender portrait of human frailty.
A Prefect's Uncle
P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse
A new arrival at Beckford College discovers that his fourteen-year-old uncle is also joining the school, bringing sharp wit, cash, and endless trouble.
Arabella Stuart: A Romance from English History
G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James
A secret royal marriage brings brief joy, swift wrath, and ultimate tragedy under the suspicious eye of King James I.
English Jests and Anecdotes, Collected from Various Sources
Various
Sharp, unpredictable, and fiercely brief, this collection captures the irreverent pulse of historical English banter.
King Richard II
William Shakespeare
A fragile monarch misjudges his own divinely sanctioned power, precipitating a bitter rift among his noblemen that ultimately leads to his own downfall and a national crisis of legitimacy.
Leonora
Arnold Bennett
A quiet woman of forty, bound to a reckless, indifferent husband in the industrial English Midlands, discovers that her capacity for deep passion has not died.
My Little Sister
Elizabeth Robins
A quiet country home conceals a mother’s claustrophobic dread, until London exposes the predator waiting just beyond the gate.
The Avenger
E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
A high-stakes theft in the West End drags an innocent gentleman into a shadow world of political blackmail, royal secrets, and brutal revenge across London and Continental Europe.
The power of sympathy
William Hill Brown
Love transforms into terror when a young man discovers his intended bride is his secret half-sister.
The Skin Game (A Tragi-Comedy)
John Galsworthy
An escalating feud between a landed aristocrat and a self-made manufacturer turns a quiet English village into a battlefield of blackmail, ruin, and lost honor.
Thorley Weir
E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
An ambitious young painter and an unprincipled art critic cross paths along a quiet stretch of the Thames, where creative obsession and financial deceit tangle with the delicate beginnings of summer romance.
Imperial Federation: The Problem of National Unity
George R. (George Robert) Parkin
Global power requires political cohesion, and a vast empire scattered across oceans cannot endure as a loose collection of colonies without a unified mechanism for defense and representation.
Jan and Her Job
L. Allen (Lizzie Allen) Harker
An unselfish woman steps in to raise her orphaned relatives, discovering that true devotion requires both fierce resilience and the humility to let herself be loved.
Loyal to the School
Angela Brazil
A schoolgirl faces sudden poverty and a choice between her own creative ambitions and her loyalty to family and school.
The Education of Eric Lane
Stephen McKenna
A London playwright seeking calm is drawn into a tumultuous relationship with a mercurial aristocrat whose reckless passions threaten to consume his life and work.
The Macdermots of Ballycloran
Anthony Trollope
A noble family loses its grip on land, love, and life while Ireland's legal order slowly grinds it into dust.
The Wanderer
Fanny Burney
Driven by terror and necessity, a veiled refugee escapes Revolutionary France only to discover that surviving in peacetime England requires a different kind of courage altogether.
Frida
R. D. (Richard Doddridge) Blackmore
A tale of love, betrayal, and tragedy set in 17th-century England.
Obiter Dicta: Second Series
Augustine Birrell
To read with real pleasure, a book needs no grand ambition beyond bringing light to quiet hours and life back to old favorites.
That Lass O' Lowrie's: 1877
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Deep in the grim pit-towns of Lancashire, a fierce mine girl shields her heart against abuse and hardship until a quietly determined engineer shows her that a different life is possible.
The Fifth Queen: And How She Came to Court
Ford Madox Ford
Arriving from the countryside, a proud young woman enters the treacherous Tudor court to change its history.
The Intrusion of Jimmy
P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse
When a charming young American millionaire accepts a ridiculous bet to commit a burglary, his ill-advised foray into crime plunges him into a tangled web of stolen jewels, mistaken identities, and unexpected romance.
The Legacy of Cain
Wilkie Collins
Two girls raised as sisters by a devout minister grow up unaware that one is an adopted orphan, born to a convicted murderess on the eve of her execution.
The Parts Men Play
Beverley Baxter
A young American intellectual navigates London society during the First World War, torn between his passionate anti-war convictions and his growing love for an aristocratic English family.
The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 2
Thomas De Quincey
A brilliant intellect turns its beam on classical antiquity, high literary philosophy, and the frailties of his own circle, extracting subtle truths from historical chaos.
The Sixth Sense: A Novel
Stephen McKenna
High society meets radical politics and uncanny intuition in a pre-war London where a young man’s strange inner vision alters every relationship it touches.
The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson: By One of the Firm
Anthony Trollope
A frantic satire of commercial puffery, this dry Victorian comedy tracks three ill-matched partners as their grand retail scheme collapses under absurd advertising claims and personal infighting.
Through the Postern Gate: A Romance in Seven Days
Florence L. (Florence Louisa) Barclay
A golden summer garden becomes the battlefield for a youthful aviator determined to win the heart of an older woman within seven days.
Trevlyn Hold: A Novel
Wood, Henry, Mrs.
In a quiet corner of Victorian England, a dispossessed heir fights for his life while the man who usurped his birthright finds that stolen land brings only fear and phantom shadows.
Blind Love
Wilkie Collins
When an impulsive Irish aristocrat entangles the woman who loves him in a web of political violence, sham deaths, and insurance fraud, devotion becomes a quiet form of self-destruction.
Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy
Andrew Lang
A quiet war of words over old Scottish songs turns into a defense of literary honor, historical truth, and the shadowy line between editing and forgery.
Spinster of This Parish
W. B. (William Babington) Maxwell
A respectable Victorian daughter defies social convention to follow the magnetic explorer she loves, enduring decades of quiet ostracism and private devotion.
Tarka the otter
Henry Williamson
A young otter faces the wild currents of North Devon's rivers, hunting to survive while pursued by a merciless pack of hounds.
The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV
Unknown
A quiet light burns behind the dark wool of a boy’s coat, hidden from a cold sea wind.