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British Literature — page 59
4,240 public-domain british literature books, summarised. Page 59 of 89.
The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode
Marie Van Vorst
Jimmy Bulstrode is a man defined by his compulsive, quiet generosity and an enduring, unspoken devotion to a woman he cannot marry. He navigates a world of privilege, using his wealth to quietly untangle the lives of others while remaining tethered to his own singular, romantic loyalty.
The Shakespeare Myth
Durning-Lawrence, Edwin, Sir
The Shakespeare myth is a vigorous polemic that argues the man from Stratford-upon-Avon was an illiterate front for a far greater genius. It challenges the reader to look past historical assumptions and examine the physical evidence of the 1623 Folio.
The Silver Domino
Marie Corelli
This is a sharp, polemical survey of 1890s British literary and social life, composed by an anonymous voice who claims the privilege of the masked observer. It offers a bracing, if highly opinionated, tour through the scandals, pretenses, and personalities of the Victorian establishment, written with the confidence…
The Stowmarket Mystery
Louis Tracy
HOOK A barrister-detective hunts a shadow in an Edwardian mystery, unraveling a deadly tangle of family secrets, Japanese martial blades, and a cold-blooded murder committed in a locked room.
The Tidal Wave and Other Stories
Ethel M. (Ethel May) Dell
The heart is a wild and unpredictable landscape, where love arrives not as a gentle breeze, but as a force capable of sweeping away everything in its path.
The Vortex: A Play in Three Acts
Noël Coward
A frantic, high-society mother and her drug-addicted son collide in a desperate struggle for identity. Beneath the glitter of 1920s London, they reach for a connection that neither knows how to sustain.
War-time Silhouettes
Stephen Hudson
The Great War acts as a relentless filter, stripping away the pretenses of London’s social and political elite to reveal the fragile, selfish, or hollow hearts beneath. These sketches capture the dissonance of a home front where life continues in a state of suspended animation, shaped by the pervasive shadow of the…
A Bevy of Girls
L. T. Meade
A household of young sisters grapples with the burdens of a sickly parent and the chaotic impulses of their own growing-up years. Amidst the tension between duty and desire, a sudden disappearance forces a reckoning that changes their family forever.
A Book of Bryn Mawr Stories
Unknown
The quiet intensity of a women’s college education meets the enduring pull of personal ambition and friendship in these candid, atmospheric glimpses of campus life.
A Bundle of Ballads
Unknown
These verses preserve the echoes of a vanishing world, where wandering minstrels and village storytellers turned the tragedies of history and the whims of the heart into enduring song.
A Princess of Thule
William Black
A young Highland woman leaves her remote Hebridean island for London society, only to discover that her romantic urban husband values her as an exotic trophy rather than a living partner.
Donald Ross of Heimra (Volume 1 of 3)
William Black
A young woman inherits a Highland estate, only to find her earnest, progressive ideals clashing against the stubborn loyalties and ancient grievances of a community still devoted to an exiled local heir.
Inkle and Yarico: An opera, in three acts
George Colman
HOOK A young merchant, stranded in the wilderness and saved by an Indigenous woman, must choose between his soul-crushing pursuit of profit and the life that rescued him.
Jack Sheppard: A Romance, Vol. 2 (of 3)
William Harrison Ainsworth
A notorious thief’s relentless struggle against the law and his own dark destiny unfolds through a series of daring prison escapes and high-stakes betrayals.
King Henry VI, Part 1
William Shakespeare
A kingdom’s stability fractures as internal rivalries and external losses consume the legacy of a dead conqueror. This play charts the slow, bitter unraveling of an empire caught between past glory and present incompetence.
Ralph Sinclair's Atonement
Antony Sargent
An Englishman's web of financial disgrace and flight to Canada gives way to an earnest journey toward redemption, domestic love, and a fresh start on the prairie frontier.
Sir George Tressady
Ward, Humphry, Mrs.
A young aristocrat finds his political convictions and his marriage upended by an unexpected infatuation with a woman dedicated to the cause of the poor. He must choose between the rigid loyalties of his party and the moral awakening stirred by a life he previously ignored.
The Affectionate Shepherd
Richard Barnfield
A shepherd’s desperate, unrequited pursuit of a beautiful youth becomes a meditation on the nature of love, the vanity of worldly status, and the enduring power of virtue. This collection preserves a lyrical, pastoral vision of Elizabethan life.
The Astonishing History of Troy Town
Arthur Quiller-Couch
A man seeking solitude in a sleepy Cornish port finds his quiet life upended when an influx of ambitious outsiders, a pair of devoted brothers, and a secret cache of explosives collide in his tranquil town.
The Good Comrade
Una L. Silberrad
A young woman navigates the stifling pretenses of her genteel family by seeking independence in the quiet, rigorous world of Dutch bulb-growing. Her journey toward honesty and self-reliance challenges the rigid social boundaries of her time.
The Heart of Princess Osra
Anthony Hope
A spirited princess moves through a series of romantic escapades, discovering that the heart is a kingdom unto itself, governed by laws far more unpredictable than those of her brother’s royal court.
The Maidens' Lodge
Emily Sarah Holt
This story of family ambition, manners, and moral discovery in the early 18th century portrays the lives of young women navigating the rigid social structures of Queen Anne’s England. It is a quiet, character-driven work that finds its power in the contrast between worldly vanity and internal transformation.
The Path of Duty, and Other Stories
Harriet S. (Harriet Sophia) Caswell
This collection of tales explores the quiet moral architecture of 19th-century life, where personal integrity, the weight of family expectation, and the pursuit of duty serve as the primary engines of human character.
Vera Nevill
Cameron, H. Lovett, Mrs.
A lingering ache defines the lives of those caught in the orbit of a beauty they cannot possess or a past they cannot escape. It is a story of quiet, devastating choices made in the shadow of social expectation.
Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc
Various
A Victorian periodical opens its pages to an open network of scholars, amateur historians, and curious readers exchanging notes on obscure etymologies, regional superstitions, and lost historical sites.
Sir Thomas More, or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society
Robert Southey
A quiet scholar sitting late in his Cumberland library is visited by the ghost of a executed chancellor, sparking a deep dialogue on human progress.
Songs of Two Nations
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Light kindles from the ash of collapsed empires, and a nation long left for dead rises to claim its freedom.
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 328, August 23, 1828
Various
A mixed gathering of historical sketches, natural history observations, travel writing, and satirical verse captures the diverse reading tastes of early nineteenth-century Great Britain.
The underworld: The story of Robert Sinclair, miner
James C. Welsh
A young Scottish miner fights to lift his community out of brutal poverty and systemic industrial oppression, only to find his dreams of personal love and social justice tested by tragic turns of fate.
The Visits of Elizabeth
Elinor Glyn
A high-spirited seventeen-year-old aristocrat writes her invalid mother a stream of letters chronicling her visits across English country houses and high-society France.
Tom Tiddler's Ground
Charles Dickens
A summer day spent confronting a self-absorbed hermit exposes the vanity of solitude and the quiet strength of human connection.
Wandering Heath
Arthur Quiller-Couch
Ghostly drummers on storm-swept reefs, bumbling local militias, and infants writing cynical diaries all find a home in this whimsical Cornish collection.
Why Frau Frohmann Raised Her Prices, and Other Stories
Anthony Trollope
This collection of tales explores the quiet collisions between personal integrity and the shifting economic realities of the nineteenth century. It captures the small, lived consequences of pride, duty, and social expectation with steady, unadorned observation.
Aurora Floyd, Vol. 1: Fifth Edition
M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon
Secretly wed to a groom in her impetuous youth, a banker's heiress marries for love while her hidden past comes back to haunt her.
Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare, Euseby Treen, Joseph Carnaby, and Silas Gough, Clerk
Walter Savage Landor
Young William Shakespeare faces a trial for deer-stealing before a pompous magistrate, using his quick-witted eloquence to defend his freedom and chart his destiny.
Deadlock
Dorothy M. (Dorothy Miller) Richardson
A young woman navigates the quiet interior tides of London boarding-house life, finding her sense of self continually reshaped through an intense intellectual partnership.
Flames
Robert Hichens
A refined young idealist, eager to test his soul beyond the limits of mere intellect, agrees to a series of dark sittings that permanently exchange his spirit for a dead man’s malignity.
Friends in Need: Ship's Company, Part 2
W. W. (William Wymark) Jacobs
Three London dock-loafers scheme to fake one man's drownings to claim a charitable purse, only to discover that the intended mark holds all the winning cards.
Madam: A Novel
Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
A mother's devotion and a family's buried secrets collide when a tyrant's bitter legacy forces a young woman to choose between her inheritance and the truth.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, 1920-05-05
Various
Post-war anxiety and the lingering weight of global conflict meet the sharp edge of British irony in this single week of satirical observations.
The Collected Writings of Dougal Graham, "Skellat" Bellman of Glasgow, Vol. 2 of 2
Dougal Graham
Rough, earthy, and relentlessly funny, these 18th-century Scottish chapbooks expose the bawdy, unvarnished realities of peasant life, parish discipline, and rural folklore through high-spirited dialogue and sharp vernacular wit.
The Fortunes of Philippa: A School Story
Angela Brazil
A young girl leaves a sun-drenched South American estate for a strict English boarding school, discovering that fitting in requires both resilience and heart.
Come Rack! Come Rope!
Robert Hugh Benson
In the shadow of Elizabeth I’s anti-Catholic statutes, a young Derbyshire couple chooses between their devotion to each other and the deadly calling of an outlawed faith.
Elster's Folly: A Novel
Wood, Henry, Mrs.
A young man's lack of moral backbone slowly entangles two women and several families in a quiet English village in years of legal and emotional ruin.
Essays from 'The Guardian'
Walter Pater
Clear, refined literary appraisal reveals how regional passions, poetic form, and philosophical devotion illuminate nineteenth-century English and French writing.
Lost Diaries
Maurice Baring
What if history's greatest figures left diaries recording only their most mundane, petty, and deeply human moments?
Mr. Punch Afloat: The Humours of Boating and Sailing
Unknown
A blustering leisure-seeker in bright new togs rowed down the river, thoroughly convinced that every woman on the banks was admiring his terrible style.
Mr. Waddington of Wyck
May Sinclair
A self-important Cotswold landlord mistakes his own pomposity for youth and magnetism, oblivious to the quiet laughter of every woman around him.