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British Literature — page 78
4,240 public-domain british literature books, summarised. Page 78 of 89.
The Missioner
E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
A charismatic social reformer and a disillusioned aristocrat collide in this atmospheric tale of secret histories and moral transformation. Their unlikely bond challenges the rigid boundaries of Edwardian society and forces each to confront the shadows of their own past.
The Thorogood Family
R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne
A sturdy blacksmith and his five sons pursue their distinct, adventurous callings with a shared commitment to faith, eventually reuniting across the Atlantic to build a new life in the rugged wilderness.
Titus Andronicus
William Shakespeare
A battle-hardened general returns from war, only to find his family ensnared in a cycle of vengeance, mutilation, and brutal retribution that consumes the foundations of Rome itself.
We and the World: A Book for Boys. Part I
Juliana Horatia Ewing
The longing for adventure often pulls hardest at those who have the deepest roots. This story captures the restless spirit of a boy destined for the sea, caught between the quiet expectations of his rural home and an urgent, internal call to explore the wider world.
A Charming Fellow, Volume II
Frances Eleanor Trollope
A charming man lives by his wits, weaving a web of social artifice that threatens to unravel the lives of everyone in a provincial town.
A Girl in Ten Thousand
L. T. Meade
A young woman struggles to balance her own yearning for independence with the overwhelming, often stifling, needs of her fragile family. This is a story of duty, sacrifice, and the quiet heroism of finding one’s way.
A King, and No King
John Fletcher
A volatile monarch discovers that his absolute power is a hollow illusion, masking a terrifying secret about his own identity. This gripping drama explores the dangerous intersection of unchecked passion and royal authority.
Alice Sit-By-The-Fire
J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie
A mother returns from India to face a family that knows her only through cold letters, setting off a comedy of errors as her imaginative daughter attempts to save her from a scandal that does not exist.
Audrey Craven
May Sinclair
A young woman of shifting loyalties and opaque intentions navigates the intellectual circles of London, leaving a trail of discarded suitors and broken ideals in her wake. This portrait of a social chameleon serves as a sharp, unsentimental dissection of ego and the fragility of human connection.
Disenchantment
C. E. (Charles Edward) Montague
The Great War was a promise that failed, leaving a generation to pick through the wreckage of their own idealism. This chronicle maps the slow, agonizing departure of belief in a world that betrayed its youth.
English Lands, Letters and Kings, vol. 4: The Later Georges to Victoria
Donald Grant Mitchell
This literary history surveys the vibrant, often turbulent transition of the English mind from the close of the eighteenth century into the long, steady light of the Victorian era. It serves as a guided tour through the lives and works of the poets, novelists, and critics who defined a transformative age.
Fenwick's Career
Ward, Humphry, Mrs.
A headstrong painter abandons his wife in the English countryside to pursue success in London, only to discover that the wreckage of his past is the true measure of his creative life.
It Was Marlowe: A Story of the Secret of Three Centuries
Wilbur Gleason Zeigler
The world believes a master poet died in a tavern brawl, but the truth is a desperate flight from the gallows into a life of shadows.
Mr. Fortune's Practice
H. C. (Henry Christopher) Bailey
Reggie Fortune, a brilliant, deceptively indolent forensic expert, navigates a series of intricate criminal puzzles where science and human malice collide. He remains the essential, reluctant guide for officialdom when the truth hides behind polite veneers.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920
Various
A satirical chronicle of post-war British life, this collection captures the fractured, weary, yet irrepressibly witty spirit of 1920 through a blend of light verse, sketches, and sharp-eyed political commentary.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, May 16, 1891
Various
A satirical chronicle of late-Victorian life, this collection blends sharp political commentary with whimsical verse and sketches, capturing the irreverent spirit of a society balancing tradition against the march of modernity.
Reginald Cruden: A Tale of City Life
Talbot Baines Reed
A young man faces the harsh realities of Victorian city life, discovering that his integrity is his only true currency after his family’s sudden loss of wealth. Through trial and error, he learns to navigate the divide between honest labor and the moral pitfalls of a ruthless urban landscape.
Tales of My Time, Vol. 1 (of 3): Who Is She?
William Pitt Scargill
The mystery of a young woman’s origins haunts a household bound by rigid social conventions and cold ambition. This narrative captures the quiet, often painful, friction between natural feeling and the suffocating expectations of 19th-century English life.
Terry
Rosa M. (Rosa Mulholland) Gilbert
A spirited, irrepressible young girl seeks purpose in a quiet, traditional household, but her boundless energy and craving for adventure repeatedly lead her and her brother into perilous, often humorous, scrapes.
The Author of Beltraffio
Henry James
A brilliant young admirer travels to the English countryside to meet his literary idol, only to discover that the novelist’s home is a battlefield where the sanctity of art clashes with the rigid morality of his wife.
The Haunted Chamber: A Novel
Duchess
The haunted chamber of a grand old castle hides more than just the ghosts of the past; it holds a desperate secret that threatens to destroy the happiness of those who walk its halls. Beneath the veneer of Victorian social graces lies a web of manipulation, jealousy, and a deadly rivalry that culminates in a…
The Widow Barnaby. Vol. 1 (of 3)
Frances Milton Trollope
A social climber with an unshakeable sense of her own charm maneuvers through the rigid hierarchies of nineteenth-century England, dragging her reluctant, orphaned niece into the fray of her desperate, theatrical quest for status.
Touch and Go: A Play in Three Acts
D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
A tense drama set against the backdrop of industrial conflict, this play explores the psychological divide between owners and workers and the desperate, often violent, search for a more meaningful life.
Young Earnest: The Romance of a Bad Start in Life
Gilbert Cannan
A restless young man maneuvers through the rigid expectations of early 20th-century English life, searching for a sincerity that his family’s domestic compromises consistently deny him.
Ziska: The Problem of a Wicked Soul
Marie Corelli
Beneath the shadow of the Sphinx, a restless spirit seeks vengeance across the threshold of time. A modern painter finds himself caught in a lethal cycle of obsession, bound to a woman whose beauty hides a dark, ancient secret.
A Master of Deception
Richard Marsh
A young man with a talent for deception navigates a trail of stolen coins, forged cheques, and ill-fated romances, leaving a path of ruin in his wake.
Alf's Button
W. A. (William Aubrey) Darlington
A common soldier finds his tunic adorned with a genie’s talisman, only to discover that magic is a poor substitute for common sense in the chaos of the Great War.
Cradock Nowell: A Tale of the New Forest. Vol. 2 (of 3)
R. D. (Richard Doddridge) Blackmore
In the shadow of the ancient New Forest, a family’s secrets and a young man’s hard-won growth collide amidst the shifting tides of social station and personal tragedy.
Cursed by a Fortune
George Manville Fenn
The sudden loss of a wealthy father leaves a young woman vulnerable to the designs of unscrupulous men, forcing her into a desperate struggle for autonomy.
Hepplestall's
Harold Brighouse
This is a sweeping, multi-generational study of a Lancashire textile dynasty, tracing the evolution of industrial power from the rise of steam to the complex social shifts following the First World War. It is a story of how a family’s ambition becomes an institution, and how that institution, in turn, shapes the…
King Henry VI, Part 3
William Shakespeare
The crown of England is a heavy, blood-stained prize, and for those caught in its orbit, the cost of holding it is often their own humanity. Amidst the chaos of the Wars of the Roses, a weary king finds that throne and peace are rarely held by the same hands.
Miriam: A Tale of Pole Moor and the Greenfield Hills
D. F. E. Sykes
HOOK Set against the bleak, beautiful backdrop of 19th-century Yorkshire, this story follows a young man’s devotion to a mysterious foundling amid the dangerous tensions between rural villagers and moorland outcasts.
Miss Meredith
Amy Levy
A young English governess finds her quiet life in a crumbling Italian palazzo transformed by a sudden, intense love that tests her principles and her place in a rigid, aristocratic family.
More Pages from a Journal
William Hale White
This collection of essays, sketches, and ruminations offers a quiet, unadorned window into the late Victorian mind, exploring the intersection of daily duty, private sorrow, and the search for meaning in a changing world.
Munster Village
Hamilton, Mary, Lady
The story follows the moral and social development of a noble family navigating the treacherous expectations of their class, contrasting the hollow ambitions of the aristocracy with the quiet, transformative power of virtuous independence.
Potterism: A Tragi-Farcical Tract
Rose Macaulay
A sharp-eyed satire of the early twentieth-century media landscape, this narrative exposes the messy collision between public sentiment and the cold, often inconvenient, pursuit of truth.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 109, October 5th 1895
Various
A quintessential snapshot of late-Victorian culture, this periodical captures the humor, anxieties, and social rigidities of 1895 through a collection of sharp-witted sketches, satirical poetry, and cynical commentary on the changing times.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, 1920-09-15
Various
A sharp-witted snapshot of British life in 1920, this collection captures a nation finding its footing in the awkward, weary aftermath of the Great War. It is a mosaic of satire, observation, and light-hearted absurdity.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, November 27, 1841
Various
A sharp-witted chronicle of early Victorian life, this inaugural collection captures the frantic, ribald, and often absurd pulse of 1840s London through satire, theatrical critique, and social commentary.
Rab and His Friends
John Brown
The story follows a legendary, battle-scarred mastiff and his quiet, devoted masters, tracing a deep bond that survives even the harshest trials of illness and mortality. It is a meditation on love, loss, and the silent dignity of suffering.
The Autobiography of a Slander
Edna Lyall
This cautionary tale chronicles the devastating power of a lie as it moves from a casual tea-table remark to a lethal weapon. It serves as a stark, timeless meditation on the moral weight of our idle speech.
The Helpmate
May Sinclair
A marriage begins to unravel when a wife discovers her husband’s secret past, forcing both partners to confront the agonizing chasm between their ideals and the flawed reality of human love.
The House of Egremont
Molly Elliot Seawell
A defiant English gentleman loses his ancestral home to a usurper and finds his destiny among the French-exiled court of the Stuart kings.
The lady of the basement flat
Vaizey, George de Horne, Mrs.
A young woman sheds her identity to live as an elderly recluse, only to discover that the most profound transformations occur when she stops acting and starts living.
The London Visitor
Mary Russell Mitford
The London visitor is an elusive, repeating archetype of urban gentility who disrupts the quiet order of country life. Through his uncanny reappearances, a local narrator finds herself caught in a comic, surreal puzzle of identity.
The Persecution of Bob Pretty: Odd Craft, Part 9
W. W. (William Wymark) Jacobs
The tale of a village poacher who turns the tables on the men hired to stop him, this story is a masterclass in rural wit and the art of the long con.
The Second Fiddle
Phyllis Bottome
A quiet, unassuming secretary finds herself caught in the emotional orbit of a proud, wounded veteran, navigating the fragile space between pride and true connection. This is a story of how the hardest battles are often fought within the walls of a room, rather than on the fields of war.
The Town Traveller
George Gissing
A commercial traveler stumbles into a web of bigamy and high-society secrets, leading him on a frantic, comedic quest through the bustling, soot-stained streets of late-Victorian London.