Free summaries
British Literature — page 75
4,240 public-domain british literature books, summarised. Page 75 of 89.
The Two Guardians
Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge
A steadfast young woman, orphaned and cast into a household governed by worldliness and moral compromise, preserves her integrity by simple adherence to duty.
Thomas Lord Cromwell
Unknown
A blacksmith’s son rises through study, travel, and statecraft to become the King’s top minister, only to be brought down by political envy and an unread warning letter.
Amos Huntingdon
Theodore P. Wilson
When family duty clashes with pride, quiet devotion quietly reshapes an entire household.
Antony and Cleopatra
William Shakespeare
A Roman general bound to the ruler of Egypt struggles to reconcile global empire with private passion, triggering a clash of nations that reshapes the ancient world.
Blue-Stocking Hall, (Vol. 2 of 3)
William Pitt Scargill
Wisdom and vanity clash across the Irish countryside and London drawing rooms as two families test whether quiet virtue can withstand the pull of fashionable worldliness.
Home Influence: A Tale for Mothers and Daughters
Grace Aguilar
A quiet house in Devonshire becomes the testing ground for every variety of childhood fault and maternal patience.
John Ames, Native Commissioner: A Romance of the Matabele Rising
Bertram Mitford
A British official in colonial Rhodesia faces a native uprising, personal betrayal, and a perilous journey to protect a woman he loves.
Mad Shepherds, and Other Human Studies
L. P. (Lawrence Pearsall) Jacks
A eccentric shepherd looks up at the English night sky, indifferent to the gossip of the village tavern because his mind is wandering through the rings of Saturn.
Married life
May Edginton
Expectations collide with hard realities when romantic ideals enter the grind of domestic life and financial strain.
Nature and Art
Mrs. Inchbald
Two brothers choose radically different paths in eighteenth-century England—one climbing the ranks of social ambition through rigid conformity, the other raising a son in wild innocence far from worldly corruption.
Neighbours on the Green
Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
Quiet observers know that small towns keep big secrets. In this nineteenth-century Surrey enclave, gossipy warmth masks deep griefs, secret pasts, and quiet sacrifices.
Neva's three lovers: a novel
Harriet Lewis
A orphaned heiress navigating a labyrinth of forged letters, treacherous step-parents, and competing suitors must unearth the truth about her past to secure her future.
Next Door Neighbours: A Comedy
Mrs. Inchbald
Boundaries melt when a paper-thin wall is all that separates a realm of ruinous aristocratic luxury from a cold room where an impoverished family starves.
Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II
Jean Ingelow
A quiet, luminous collection of Victorian verse, exploring faith, domestic intimacy, and the lingering shadow of loss.
Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914
Various
Dive into the wit and satire of *Punch* magazine, offering a unique perspective on early 20th-century life, politics, and culture.
Rosy
Mrs. Molesworth
A young girl’s fierce jealousy and explosive temper threaten to tear apart her quiet English home when a gentle orphaned cousin arrives to live with her family.
Spiritual Adventures
Arthur Symons
A strange, quiet child watches his parents, learns he has no home to anchor him, and discovers that the only real life he possesses is the life going on inside his head.
That Stick
Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge
An unexpected inheritance lifts a modest, middle-aged clerk into the British peerage, forcing an unpretentious couple to navigate elevated social duties while protecting their young heir from envious family scheme.
The Beggar Man
Ruby M. (Ruby Mildred) Ayres
She married a mysterious stranger to save her family from poverty, only to discover he might be the very man who ruined them.
The Native Born
I. A. R. (Ida Alexa Ross) Wylie
A English officer falls in love with an Anglo-Indian woman in a remote garrison town, sparking a fatal clash between colonial ambition, native rebellion, and personal honor.
The Pigeon Pie
Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) Yonge
In the wake of the Royalist defeat at Worcester, a family of young loyalists must protect their fugitives from Parliamentarian redcoats, learning that survival demands quick thinking and genuine kindness over childish bravado.
The Setons
O. Douglas
A glimpse into the lives of a Scottish family, where love, faith, and community intertwine amidst the challenges of early 20th-century Glasgow.
The Settlers at Home
Harriet Martineau
When catastrophic flooding breaks the dykes of seventeenth-century Lincolnshire, four children and a loyal servant find themselves stranded on a shrinking patch of high ground, stripped of their homes and left to fight for survival.
Adeline Mowbray
Amelia Opie
A woman's devoted practice of radical moral theory destroys her social standing and tears her life apart, proving that high-minded principle cannot protect a heart from a unforgiving world.
All in It
Ian Hay
War is not a grand theater of glory, but a relentless routine of mud, camaraderie, and endurance, where humor is the only clean gear left to wear.
"All's Well"
Emily Sarah Holt
In sixteen-century Kent, a covertly Protestant family faces brutal Marian persecution, enduring imprisonment, betrayal, and martyrdom while discovering the quiet endurance of faith.
Barford Abbey, a Novel: In a Series of Letters
Mrs. (Susannah) Gunning
Deep beneath the aristocratic decorum of eighteenth-century England lies a world of hidden origins, desperate romantic misunderstandings, and quiet, persistent devotion.
Cheap Jack Zita
S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
A fierce young woman bound to a travelling peddler's van finds herself stranded amidst the social unrest and treacherous, ice-bound marshes of nineteenth-century Cambridgeshire.
Elizabeth Visits America
Elinor Glyn
An aristocratic young English wife, parted from her husband by a petty quarrel, sets sail for Edwardian America and records the headlong collision of European refinement with raw Western vitality.
Growing Up: A Story of the Girlhood of Judith Mackenzie
Conklin, Nathaniel, Mrs.
A young girl faces life's small daily choices with an earnest heart, learning that true growth comes from yielding her self-will to faith and service.
Half a Life-Time Ago
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
A woman binds herself to an oath made at her dying mother’s bedside, forfeiting her own youth, her estate, and the only man she will ever love.
Jill: A Flower Girl
L. T. Meade
Amid the grimy, crowded slums of late-nineteenth-century London, a fiercely devoted flower girl makes the ultimate sacrifice of her own happiness to shield her suffering mother and protect the man she loves.
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.
Louisa Pallant
Henry James
A world-weary bachelor watches his nephew fall for a mesmerizing young heiress, only to be confronted by the girl’s mother, who makes a startling, desperate sacrifice to protect the boy from her own daughter.
Master of His Fate
J. Maclaren (James Maclaren) Cobban
A gifted man maintains his youth by secretly absorbing the vital energy of others, until love reveals his parasitical nature and forces a fatal reckoning.
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.
Mr. Joseph Hanson, The Haberdasher
Mary Russell Mitford
A grandiloquent haberdasher sweeps into a provincial town with flashy salesmanship, only to have his matrimonial ambitions derailed by a local political feud and a surprising personal history.
My Brave and Gallant Gentleman: A Romance of British Columbia
Robert Watson
An aristocratic outcast finds redemption and love in the rugged Canadian wilderness when his past unexpectedly catches up with him.
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.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914
Various
A collection of satire, light verse, and cultural commentary captures the anxiety and absurdity of Edwardian Britain just months before global war.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, July 16, 1892
Various
A satirical glance at late-Victorian society reveals a world obsessed with public spectacles, political anxieties, and the absurdities of daily life.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 153, December 26, 1917
Various
A biting, affectionate portrait of a nation finding humor in the darkest days of the First World War.
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.