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British Literature — page 49
6,377 public-domain british literature books, summarised. Page 49 of 133.
Love in Excess
Eliza Fowler Haywood
Driven by obsessive passion and unyielding ambition, a charismatic nobleman navigates a chaotic web of romantic entanglements, where desire repeatedly shatters social boundaries and destroys those who dare to love without restraint.
Modern Broods
Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge
The domestic rhythm of a quiet town garden is shattered by the arrival of four young half-sisters, each grappling with the restless, modern spirit of the turn of the century.
![Cover of Night watches [complete]](https://cdn.myebooksbuy.com/c/night-watches-complete-w-w-william-wymark-jacobs.webp)
Night watches [complete]
W. W. (William Wymark) Jacobs
These stories capture the petty deceits, domestic skirmishes, and absurd blunders of working-class Londoners. They are populated by stubborn men, formidable wives, and night-watchmen who find themselves hopelessly entangled in the private lives of others.
The Bab Ballads
W. S. (William Schwenck) Gilbert
A world of topsy-turvy logic, where the virtuous are often fools, the criminals are punctilious, and the absurd is the only sensible way to behave.
The Haunted and the Haunters
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
A man of science risks his sanity to investigate a London townhouse plagued by impossible phenomena, only to uncover a legacy of dark obsession buried deep within its foundations.
The Paper Cap: A Story of Love and Labor
Amelia E. Barr
The simple brown paper cap, folded in seconds by a nineteenth-century mill hand, becomes a quiet emblem of dignity, pride, and democratic transformation.
A Daughter of Fife
Amelia E. Barr
A girl from a windswept Scottish fishing village steps into a world of landed privilege, tested by class pride, family feuds, and silent sacrifice.
A Group of Noble Dames
Thomas Hardy
Bound by family ambition and class convention, women navigate the quiet violence of forced marriages, hidden loves, and public disgrace.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine
Various
Across the tumultuous decades of nineteenth-century Europe, statecraft, military siege, local custom, and raw human ambition collide inside a vibrant landscape of narrative and debate.
Box and Cox: A Romance of Real Life in One Act
John Maddison Morton
A battle of wits over a single rented room yields a masterclass in Victorian theatrical chaos.
Brother Copas
Arthur Quiller-Couch
A fragile young girl from America brings a spark of innocent vitality into the petty rivalries and quiet routines of an ancient English almshouse.
English and Scottish Ballads, Volume VIII
Unknown
Centuries of popular song converge in a tapestry of clever riddles, tragic sea voyages, comedic domestic quarrels, and triumphant underdogs.
Imaginary Portraits
Walter Pater
A young soul reaches toward an ideal of beauty or truth, only to find the surrounding world too heavy, distant, or cold.
Kimono
John Paris
An innocent Anglo-Japanese bride journeys to Tokyo, only to find her marriage fractured by hidden family fortunes and the dark realities of a culture she cannot claim as her own.
The Affair at the Inn
Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
A sharp-tongued American heiress and a solemn Scottish baronet collide at a misty Devonshire hotel, each stubbornly pretending to dislike the other.
The Circle: A Comedy in Three Acts
W. Somerset (William Somerset) Maugham
Thirty years after running off together, an scandalous pair of aging lovers returns to the estate they abandoned, only to watch history repeat itself in the exact same drawing room.
The Mutable Many: A Novel
Robert Barr
A hard-driven London factory manager and a passionate young labor leader clash over a strike, testing the limits of duty, ambition, and love.
The Seven Poor Travellers
Charles Dickens
A chance encounter with an old Elizabethan almshouse on Christmas Eve inspires a roving narrator to host a feast, prompting a moving tale of military redemption and reconciliation.
The War of the Wenuses
E. V. (Edward Verrall) Lucas
A brilliant, biting satire skewers Victorian society, retail culture, and late-nineteenth-century literary conventions under the thin guise of a sci-fi invasion.
The Witch's Head
H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard
An early love shattered by deceit gives way to violent exile in South Africa, where battle and loss shape a man's return to England to reclaim his home.
Time's Laughingstocks, and Other Verses
Thomas Hardy
A volume of poetic dramatic monologues and introspective verse exploring the friction between human passion, relentless time, and the unheeding natural world.
At the Villa Rose
A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason
A wealthy widow’s murder in a Savoy villa seems an open-and-shut case of domestic betrayal, until a French detective sees through the staged evidence to uncover an intricate network of greed and cold deception.
Is He Popenjoy?
Anthony Trollope
An uncertain inheritance and a doubtful Italian heir force a quiet English family to confront the high price of title, money, and pride.
London Town
Felix Leigh
A child’s eye view of Victorian London reveals a bustling world where historic grandeur meets the cheerful din of street vendors.
The Complete Poems of Sir John Davies. Volume 2 of 2
Davies, John, Sir
An acerbic tour of Elizabethan vice gives way to delicate courtly entertainments and devout sacred verse in this second volume of Sir John Davies' collected poetry.
The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 4 (of 5)
Unknown
Across wind-swept borders and cold sea channels, these traditional verses give voice to betrayed lovers, outlawed riders, and tragic queens whose fates turn on a single hasty word or violent stroke.
The Honorable Miss: A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town
L. T. Meade
A young woman’s steady heart exposes the vanity and desperate secrets of a proud family in a small seaside town.
The Reason Why
Elinor Glyn
Desperate circumstances drive a proud woman into a arranged marriage with an unsuspecting aristocrat, leading to a fiery war of pride, silence, and secret heartbreak before true devotion is revealed.
A Window in Thrums
J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie
A crippled mother watches the world from a tiny weaver's cottage window in nineteenth-century Scotland, holding her family together through fierce devotion until sudden tragedies break their small haven apart.
Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall
Charles Major
She has golden hair, a fiercely independent spirit, and a father determined to break her will.
Gowrie
G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James
In 1600, a young Scottish nobleman returns from continental Europe to find his line threatened by political paranoia, ancient feuds, and a king determined to engineer his total destruction.
Orientations
W. Somerset (William Somerset) Maugham
A young man leaves his quiet village to seek his fortune in the world, only to discover that every choice carries an unforeseen toll.
Some Poems
Walter Scott
A sweep of prophetic visions, spectral dances, and violent battlefields reveals the terrible price of human ambition and the enduring strain of martial duty across centuries of conflict.
The Burning Wheel
Aldous Huxley
An restless intellect strains against the confines of ordinary existence, seeking spiritual light while battling the earthy realities of human desire and urban squalor.
The History of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond
William Makepeace Thackeray
Inheriting an ornate, red-haired locket transformed into a diamond pin launches an obscure London clerk into high society, fraudulent financial schemes, sudden bankruptcy, and the hard-won wisdom of modest domestic life.
The Oxford Circus: A Novel of Oxford and Youth
Hamish Miles
An opulent youth swaggers through Oxford and London on a wave of self-regard, unbothered by reality until life demands a final reckoning.
The Shadow of Ashlydyat
Wood, Henry, Mrs.
A quiet provincial bank crumbles under the reckless hand of a charming partner, leaving an ancient family ruined, a sweet young wife broken-hearted, and an entire English town reckoning with the gap between social appearance and moral truth.
The Third Volume
Fergus Hume
Unresolved bloodstains and missing identities collide when an old tragedy resurfaces to unravel a Victorian family's carefully constructed illusions.
An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews
Henry Fielding
A sharp, mercenary servant girl leverages her calculated modesty to trap a foolish young squire into marriage, exposing the hypocrisies of virtuous posturing.
Augustus Does His Bit: A True-to-Life Farce
Bernard Shaw
A pomposity-blinded aristocrat running a rural recruiting office attempts to demonstrate superior wartime vigilance, only to be effortlessly bamboozled by a cleverly disguised visitor.
Aylwin
Theodore Watts-Dunton
The sea erodes a eastern English cliff, dragging ancestral tombs into the deep, while a dead father’s curse follows two lovers across the Welsh mountains and into the bohemian attics of Victorian London.
Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge
Unknown
A painstaking survey of rare early English printing lays open the raw textual foundations of Elizabethan drama and Renaissance literature.
Melmoth the Wanderer, Vol. 4
Charles Robert Maturin
A damned soul wanders the earth for centuries, desperate to trade his immortal torment for any human spirit weak enough to accept it.
Money for nothing
P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse
Resting beside the Skirme, Rudge-in-the-Vale moves at the pace of a cat stropping its back; only the local chemist keeps the world turning until an exploding oak tree shatters the summer calm.
Peter Ruff and the Double Four
E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
A high-stakes game of international espionage hinges on a master of disguise who turns the criminal underworld upside down to secure his own fortune and power.
Sketches of Young Gentlemen
Charles Dickens
A gallery of absurdity, this satire turns a sharp eye on the social posturing and vanity of nineteen-century British manhood.
The Brass Bottle
F. Anstey
Uncorking a long-imprisoned genie brings a London architect infinite gratitude, extravagant wealth, and an endless stream of utterly ruined plans.
The Crime and the Criminal
Richard Marsh
An unexpected encounter on a late-night train hurls a quiet London clerk into a labyrinth of identity theft, secret societies, and murder.