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British Literature — page 72
4,542 public-domain british literature books, summarised. Page 72 of 95.
Madame Claire
Susan Ertz
The wisdom of an elderly woman transforms the lives of her family, proving that age is no barrier to shaping the future. This elegant novel explores the intricate, often hidden, connections between generations.
My Lords of Strogue, Vol. 3 (of 3): A Chronicle of Ireland, from the Convention to the Union
Lewis Wingfield
In the shadow of the Act of Union, a nation’s crumbling sovereignty mirrors the fractured lives of those bound by blood, betrayal, and the desperate search for liberty.
Portia
Duchess
A high-society household is fractured by a shameful accusation, leaving a young woman to navigate the tension between her own cold judgment and the magnetic, misunderstood man she is expected to despise.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 156, March 12, 1919
Various
This collection of wit and commentary captures the singular, weary, and eccentric atmosphere of London in the spring of 1919, as a society attempts to laugh while navigating the strange, lingering debris of the Great War.
The Female Wits
Anonymous
This biting theatrical satire exposes the chaotic vanity of the late seventeenth-century London stage, mocking the over-wrought ambitions of three prominent women playwrights who dared to challenge the masculine monopoly of the theater.
The Hill: A Romance of Friendship
Horace Annesley Vachell
This story follows a young boy’s formative years at the prestigious Harrow School, exploring the profound, often painful complexities of adolescent loyalty, social ambition, and moral growth. It captures the distinct "strenuousness and sentiment" of English public school life, tracking a friendship that is tested…
The Indian Bangle
Fergus Hume
This Victorian mystery follows a tangled conspiracy of imposture, murder, and political radicalism. When a young woman is coerced into a loveless marriage by a man claiming to be a colonial heir, her friends must unravel a web of deceit to save her inheritance and expose the truth behind a series of violent crimes.
The Spinners
Eden Phillpotts
In a small Dorset mill town, the rigid hierarchies of the early twentieth-century textile industry collide with the messy, unyielding realities of human desire and the struggle for personal dignity.
A Day Well Spent: A Farce, in One Act
John Oxenford
A runaway apprentice and his fast-talking foreman attempt to abandon their shop for a day of mischief, only to find themselves entangled in a series of increasingly absurd cases of mistaken identity.
A Double Knot
George Manville Fenn
The shadow of a secret marriage haunts two sisters, leading them into a web of social maneuvering, desperate escapes, and a violent collision with a long-buried family past.
A Question of Marriage
Vaizey, George de Horne, Mrs.
When a medical diagnosis threatens to define a woman's future, she must navigate the boundary between duty and personal happiness. This story follows two friends—Vanna and Jean—as they encounter love, loss, and the quiet, often overlooked, trials of domestic life.
Aunt Judith: The Story of a Loving Life
Grace Beaumont
The story follows the spiritual and physical trials of two young friends as they learn to navigate the harshness of others, the onset of tragedy, and the quiet power of selfless faith. It is a portrait of resilience in the face of inevitable sorrow.
Better Dead
J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie
A young Scottish intellectual travels to London, determined to "improve" the world by assassinating its most superfluous citizens, only to find his own violent logic eventually unraveling.
Daisy Thornton
Mary Jane Holmes
A young woman’s impulsive decision to annul her marriage triggers a cascade of regret, testing the resilience of love and the limits of forgiveness.
Dodo Wonders--
E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
A restless, indomitable socialite navigates the fading glamour of the British aristocracy as the First World War dismantles her world, forcing her to confront the absurdity of her own privilege.
Eli's Children: The Chronicles of an Unhappy Family
George Manville Fenn
This is a story of how rigid, judgmental moralizing can dismantle a family from within, leaving its members to navigate the ruin of their own making.
Friarswood Post Office
Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge
A fragile boy’s slow decline and the arrival of a destitute stranger transform a struggling village household. Through sorrow and sacrifice, a family finds that true strength is forged in the quiet acceptance of one’s lot.
In Kedar's Tents
Henry Seton Merriman
In the shadow of a volatile Spanish civil war, a quick-witted Englishman becomes entangled in a dangerous web of political conspiracy, secret letters, and a love that tests the limits of loyalty.
Isabel Clarendon, Vol. 1 (of 2)
George Gissing
HOOK A refined widow of the English upper class finds her carefully ordered life disrupted by an intense, melancholic stranger who has retreated into the countryside.
John Bull, Junior
Max O'Rell
An immigrant teacher navigates the peculiar landscape of the English classroom, offering a witty, observant guide to the misadventures of learning a language and the irrepressible spirit of the British schoolboy.
Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl: Sister of that "Idle Fellow."
Jenny Wren
A sharp-tongued observer of Victorian life, this collection of essays finds humor in the tedious rituals of high society, from the performative nature of formal calls to the absurdity of the marriage market.
Peter Plymley's Letters, and Selected Essays
Sydney Smith
These letters and essays offer a masterclass in the power of wit as a weapon against institutional injustice, proving that a sharp mind can dismantle political bigotry more effectively than a formal decree.
Philippa
Mrs. Molesworth
Philippa Raynsworth, a spirited young woman, orchestrates an elaborate, secret deception to assist her sister’s social ambitions, only to discover that the most important truths are those she must eventually confront within herself.
Poetry for children
Charles Lamb
Everyday domestic scenes, sibling squabbles, and childhood moral dilemmas are rendered through structured, instructional verse designed to shape the character of young readers.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914
Various
This volume gathers the satirical wit, whimsical verse, and sharp political commentary of a storied British institution during the final winter of the pre-war era. It offers a candid, laughter-filled window into a world poised on a precipice.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 99, August 16, 1890
Various
This volume captures the sharp, satirical heartbeat of late-Victorian London, where political maneuvering and social pretension are dissected with a keen blade. It offers a window into a world of empire, etiquette, and the relentless machinery of public opinion.
Star of Mercia
Blanche Devereux
This collection of historical tales breathes life into the rugged borderlands of Wales and the English Marches, casting the distant past as a theater for raw human ambition, piety, and sudden, violent upheaval.
The Corner of Harley Street: Being Some Familiar Correspondence of Peter Harding, M.D
Bashford, H. H. (Henry Howarth), Sir
The physician’s life in pre-war London is a study of quiet wisdom, shifting social tides, and the profound, unsung responsibility of tending to the human condition. Through a series of reflective letters, a seasoned doctor weighs the march of scientific progress against the enduring simplicity of the heart.
The Cornhill Magazine (Vol. I, No. 4, April 1860)
Various
A single volume of a Victorian periodical gathers the entire arc of human interest into one place, moving without a stumble from domestic betrayals to the cutting edge of science.
The Day's Work - Part 1
Rudyard Kipling
This collection of stories captures the relentless, often brutal, and deeply absorbing labor of men and women tasked with managing the machinery of an empire at the height of its reach. It is a portrait of people defined entirely by the work they do.
The God in the Car: A Novel
Anthony Hope
The cost of ambition is rarely measured in coin alone, but in the slow, irreversible erosion of one’s own heart.
The Jervaise Comedy
J. D. (John Davys) Beresford
A week-end house party spirals into farce when a young woman vanishes, forcing an observant guest to navigate the collision between rigid class tradition and the unpredictable reality of human desire.
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 262, July 7, 1827
Various
This collection serves as a Victorian-era cultural digest, capturing the diverse intellectual interests and moral preoccupations of 1820s British society through a mix of history, travelogue, poetry, and social commentary.
The Other Man
Edgar Wallace
A criminal mastermind threatens the global order from a hijacked warship, forcing a relentless Scotland Yard detective into a high-stakes race against time.
The Pigeon: A Fantasy in Three Acts
John Galsworthy
The Pigeon: A Fantasy in Three Acts is a gentle, melancholic examination of the limits of human empathy. It explores the inevitable friction between those who wish to "fix" the poor and those who simply want to live.
The Rat-Pit
Patrick MacGill
A young woman’s migration from a quiet Irish village to the grinding poverty of a Glasgow slum reveals the brutal machinery that strips away dignity and hope.
The Village by the River
H. Louisa Bedford
The quiet life of a rural English village is irrevocably altered when a young, idealistic socialist inherits the manor and finds himself at odds with the local rector.
The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes: Volume 01
John Fletcher
These plays define the transition of the English stage, capturing a world where high-flown wit, tragic honor, and sharp, cynical comedy collide in the final echoes of the Elizabethan era.
Waste: A Tragedy, In Four Acts
Harley Granville-Barker
A brilliant, arrogant politician faces the wreckage of his personal and public life after a fleeting affair leads to a tragic, illegal procedure.
Watersprings
Arthur Christopher Benson
A sequestered Cambridge don is forced to confront the narrowness of his own existence when he inherits a country estate and falls in love with a woman who challenges his carefully constructed detachment.
Will Warburton
George Gissing
A man of status is forced by ruin into the humble life of a shopkeeper, finding that the dignity he feared to lose is easily outweighed by the quiet truth of his own character.
A Fluttered Dovecote
George Manville Fenn
A self-described "virgin and martyr" records her frantic, romantic, and often disastrous year at a girls' finishing school. This narrative offers a sharp, humorous look at the absurdities of nineteenth-century adolescence and the stifling atmosphere of a "finishing establishment.
A Lover's Complaint
William Shakespeare
A young woman sits alone in the wilderness, mourning the deception of a charismatic suitor. Her story is a confession of how easily even a guarded heart can be dismantled by the masterful performance of desire.
First Person Paramount
Ambrose Pratt
A man of sharp intellect and few scruples invents a life of daring deception, finding that the most effective way to control his fate is to become someone else entirely. This is a tale of cold-blooded ambition, identity, and the high-stakes games played by those at the top of the social ladder.
Mad: A Story of Dust and Ashes
George Manville Fenn
The story of Septimus Hardon is a somber, intimate portrait of a man adrift in the unforgiving machinery of Victorian London. It explores the crushing weight of poverty, the fragility of social standing, and the lingering echoes of past secrets.
No Hero
E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
A veteran tasked with sabotaging a younger man’s infatuation finds himself trapped in a web of his own making, where the line between duty and desire vanishes in the thin, crystalline air of the Alps.
Our Friend the Charlatan
George Gissing
The ambitious and perpetually posturing Dyce Lashmar drifts through late-Victorian society, trading in hollow philosophies and the favor of wealthy benefactors to build a life of unearned privilege.
Percy: A Tragedy
Hannah More
A tale of star-crossed love and ruin, this drama explores the devastating consequences of parental authority and the destructive nature of unchecked jealousy. Set against the backdrop of historical border feuds, it remains a poignant study of individual virtue trapped in a cycle of vengeance.