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British Literature — page 70
6,377 public-domain british literature books, summarised. Page 70 of 133.
Keynotes
George Egerton
A woman paces through a quiet forest or rests beside an empty frame, caught between the suffocating demands of conventional duty and the electric, untamable rhythm of her own inner life.
Leonora
Maria Edgeworth
When an artful woman sets out to destroy a virtuous marriage, she discovers that theatrical passion is no match for quiet integrity and self-possession.
Melchior's Dream and Other Tales
Juliana Horatia Ewing
Conceited boys, dream-plagued poets, French aristocrats, and frightened country youths discover that the hardest lesson in life is learning to look beyond oneself.
Old Mortality, Volume 2
Walter Scott
A young man trapped between fanaticism and tyranny must navigate the bloody currents of seventeenth-century Scotland to save both his life and his conscience.
Paths of Judgement
Anne Douglas Sedgwick
A quiet, tragic study of misplaced devotion, where noble intentions unravel into guilt and irreversible loss.
Penelope Brandling: A Tale of the Welsh coast in the Eighteenth Century
Vernon Lee
Arriving at her husband's isolated Welsh castle, a young Swiss bride discovers her new family harbors sinister secrets of wrecking and murder that will force her to make a desperate choice.
Tell Me a Story
Mrs. Molesworth
Children need to hear that their ordinary feelings matter, and that even the small choices they make in the shadow of everyday life have real weight.
The Curse of Kehama, Volume 1 (of 2)
Robert Southey
A tyrannical king gains absolute power over heaven and earth, but his total victory is derailed when his terrible curse gives a grieving victim the unique power to defy him.
The Dull Miss Archinard
Anne Douglas Sedgwick
A quiet life of quiet duty gives way to a tangled web of duty and devotion. When love arrives unbidden, self-sacrifice becomes a dark corner from which only absolute honesty can rescue the soul.
The Father and Daughter: A Tale, in Prose
Amelia Opie
Driven by a lover's false promises, a young woman abandons her home, only to learn that her desertion has shattered her father’s mind and exposed her child to absolute isolation.
The House of Baltazar
William John Locke
A brilliant, headstrong scholar leaves everything behind, only to find that the world he abandoned refuses to remain forgotten.
The Last of Their Race
Annie S. Swan
The Last of Their Race captures the quiet dignity of a declining Scottish dynasty as two siblings confront the end of their ancestral home.
The poems of Mary Howitt
Mary (Mary Botham) Howitt
Simple, rhythmic verse turns daily home life, natural wonders, and deep Christian charity into accessible moral stories for young and old alike.
The Prophecy of Merlin, and Other Poems
John Reade
Ancient prophecy, classical tragedy, and Victorian nation-building meet in a verse collection that spans from King Arthur's Avalon to nineteenth-century Canada.
The Sign of the Red Cross: A Tale of Old London
Evelyn Everett-Green
A prosperous builder’s family and their devout neighbours endure the back-to-back catastrophes of 1665 and 1666, discovering through pestilence and fire what kind of timber their souls are made of.
Lake country sketches
H. D. (Hardwicke Drummond) Rawnsley
A countryside clergyman roams the hills of Lakeland, gathering the voices of aging gardeners, shepherds, and wallers to preserve the living memory of a region and its famous poet.
Mattie:—A Stray (Vol 2 of 3)
F. W. (Frederick William) Robinson
A young woman rescued from the London streets fights to clear her name, protect the people she loves, and survive a web of deceit.
Sanders of the river
Edgar Wallace
A solitary British commissioner rules a vast African territory through swift, iron-handed authority, unyielding local magic, and the quiet threat of a river gunboat.
The Happy-go-lucky Morgans
Edward Thomas
A suburban London house becomes an unexpected refuge of Welsh warmth, eccentric talk, and endless boyhood adventure.
The Idol of the Blind: A Novel
Tom Gallon
A boy surrenders his fortune to shield the woman he loves, bearing the world's disdain so that her illusions might remain unbroken.
The Lady of Pleasure: A Comedie, as It Was Acted by Her Majesties Servants, at the Private House in Drury Lane
James Shirley
High-society extravagance collides with sharp-tongued wit when a country gentleman stages a theatrical display of squandering to save his wife from London's seductive vanity.
The Mother's Recompense, Volume 2: A Sequel to Home Influence
Grace Aguilar
A quiet masterpiece of Victorian domestic life, Grace Aguilar’s novel examines the lasting echo of a mother’s moral guidance through the trials and quiet triumphs of a grown family.
Three Loving Ladies
Mrs. Dowdall
A woman’s desire to shield her children from institutional severity clashes with her husband’s rigid sense of duty in a wealthy Northern port.
A Bottle in the Smoke: A Tale of Anglo-Indian Life
Janet Milne Rae
The tropical sun of British India illuminates a young woman’s disillusionment, revealing the fragile, often deceptive nature of colonial life. A narrative of moral awakening, the story charts the journey of a bride who finds that behind the gilded surface of her new world lie rot, crime, and the redemption of truth.
A Mummer's Wife
George Moore
A small-town dressmaker leaves her husband for a touring actor, only to find that freedom carries its own brutal price.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 424, February 1851
Various
This collection serves as a vibrant, combative snapshot of Victorian intellectual life, capturing the era’s fierce religious anxieties, political turbulence, and deep-seated preoccupation with national identity.
Comedies of Courtship
Anthony Hope
This collection of stories explores the tangled, often humorous, and perpetually indecisive nature of romantic pursuit among the leisured classes of the late nineteenth century.
Coriolanus
William Shakespeare
Pride and violent contempt turn Rome’s greatest protector into its deadliest threat when a warrior refuses to bow before the public he considers beneath him.
John Sherman
W. B. (William Butler) Yeats
A man torn between the quiet, mossy corners of his youth and the bustling, hollow demands of the city wanders toward a final, irreparable confrontation with his own choices. This quiet, melancholic narrative explores the fragility of identity when faced with the relentless, crushing pressure of expectation.
Mount Royal: A Novel. Volume 3 of 3
M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon
The secrets of a Cornish manor house unravel in a dark, atmospheric drama where deep-seated jealousies lead to a cycle of vengeance and, ultimately, a search for redemption.
Mr. Punch on the Warpath: Humours of the Army, the Navy and the Reserve Forces
Unknown
This collection captures the wry, perennial grumbling of a nation perpetually preoccupied with the state of its own armed forces. It offers a satirical mirror to the bureaucratic absurdities and colorful personalities of British military life.
Mr. Punch on Tour: The Humour of Travel at Home and Abroad
Unknown
Traveling abroad is a grand adventure, but as every seasoned tourist knows, it is often best remembered for the absurdities that occur along the way.
Mr. Wycherly's Wards
L. Allen (Lizzie Allen) Harker
An aging scholar finds his quiet life in Oxford transformed when he assumes responsibility for a spirited, imaginative young girl who longs to be "precious" to someone.
Neighbours
Robert J. C. Stead
Two young men leave the grind of an Ontario factory for the promise of the Saskatchewan prairie, seeking independence and the freedom of their own homesteads.
Penny Plain
O. Douglas
A plain young woman in a Scottish border town finds her quiet, scrimping life upended by an eccentric landlady's lodger and an unlooked-for, staggering inheritance.
Poems
Samuel Rogers
Time, loss, and the softening reach of memory weave through these reflective verses, mapping how human emotion transforms raw experience into enduring interior landscapes.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 21, 1892
Various
Satirizing Victorian hypocrisies with sharp social observation and parliamentary banter, this issue captures a society balancing rigid decorum, political anxiety, and modern ambition.
The Babe, B.A
E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
A charmingly aimless young man navigates the rituals, sports, and social absurdities of late-Victorian Cambridge. This lighthearted portrait captures the essence of a student life defined more by companionship than by academic ambition.
The Chink in the Armour
Marie Belloc Lowndes
A young English widow visiting a French casino town ignores every warning that her charming new hosts are not what they seem, until an ominous fortune card begins to take physical shape.
The Curate in Charge
Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
A dedicated clergyman faces the sudden, devastating loss of his home and livelihood, leaving his two daughters to navigate a precarious future in a society that offers them little room to maneuver.
The Duchess of Rosemary Lane: A Novel
B. L. (Benjamin Leopold) Farjeon
A young woman’s mysterious origins and the quiet sacrifices of a London street-trader collide in this Victorian drama of class, hidden history, and the pursuit of redemption.
The Sheep-Stealers
Violet Jacob
A restless soul flees his past only to find that the weight of his own actions is a tether that no distance can truly sever. In the shadow of the Black Mountain, the line between freedom and ruin proves dangerously thin.
The Spider
Fergus Hume
A web of blackmail, impersonation, and murder entangles the London elite, forcing a private investigator to unmask a criminal mastermind known only as The Spider.
The White Feather
P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse
A quiet, studious boy makes a single mistake of nerve in public and learns that retrieving his self-respect requires an entirely different kind of courage.
The World of Romance: being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856
William Morris
Mystical dream-states, violent knightly quests, and quiet architectural devotion merge into an intense vision of medieval life where beauty and mortality are inextricably bound.
A Bit O' Love
John Galsworthy
A country curate faces a shattering personal betrayal with a radical, quiet grace that alienates his congregation and tests the limits of his faith. This is a story of a man trying to love without possession.
A Rainy June, and Other Stories
Ouida
This collection of short stories captures the fragility of human happiness, exploring how social expectations and the weight of tradition often crush the tender, private hopes of the individual.
Elfin music
Unknown
This collection gathers the most enduring voices in English literature to map the shifting, often dangerous, and always enchanting borders of the fairy realm. It serves as a comprehensive bridge between classical folklore and the romantic imagination.