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British Literature — page 85
6,377 public-domain british literature books, summarised. Page 85 of 133.
A Cathedral Courtship
Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
A young American woman finds her educational tour of English cathedrals hilariously derailed when she keeps running into a charming stranger who seems determined to sketch his way into her heart.
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 the days of Queen Mary
E. E. (Edward Ebenezer) Crake
A young man’s reckless defiance of royal authority in the shadow of Queen Mary’s reign triggers a dangerous chain of events, pulling his family into the turbulent politics of a divided nation. Through peril, trial, and the clash of continental wars, the bonds of loyalty are tested against the unforgiving backdrop…
Kate Vernon: A Tale. Vol. 3 (of 3)
Mrs. Alexander
A young woman navigates the loss of her home and fortune, finding her way through the complex social machinations of mid-nineteenth-century England. Her journey toward stability is defined by the tension between her own integrity and the manipulative figures who drift in and out of her life.
Last Poems
Edward Thomas
A phantom memory called up by a single crushed leaf. A train window framing a cloud that holds back time. Rain on a ruined barn, and soldiers marching down roads that lead only to France.
Men We Meet in the Field
A. G. Bagot
The hunting field is a world unto itself, where the social order of the countryside finds its true, chaotic, and often comical expression. This collection of vignettes captures the shared passion for the sport that binds squire, farmer, and clergyman together in the pursuit of the fox.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 107, December 22, 1894
Various
A sharp, satirical snapshot of Victorian culture, this collection gathers the biting humor and light verse that defined the late nineteenth-century British imagination.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 109, July 27, 1895
Various
This collection captures the frantic, witty, and deeply partisan atmosphere of British political life during the General Election of 1895. It serves as a colorful, satiric time capsule of Victorian public opinion.
Reuben Sachs
Amy Levy
This portrait of a young man caught between his own soaring ambitions and the suffocating expectations of his tight-knit community offers a sharp, unsentimental look at the intersection of tradition and modern identity.
The adopted son
A. L. O. E.
This narrative explores the profound spiritual transformation of a young outcast, framed through the teachings of the Lord’s Prayer. It serves as a testament to the belief that grace and integrity, rather than worldly status, define a life of true meaning.
The Land of Promise: A Comedy in Four Acts
W. Somerset (William Somerset) Maugham
A woman’s desperate escape from English servitude leads her to a harsh, unfamiliar marriage on the Canadian frontier. In the silence of the prairie, she discovers a life she never expected to choose.
The Mysteries of Heron Dyke: A Novel of Incident. Volume 1 (of 3)
T. W. (Thomas Wilkinson) Speight
A family estate hides a vanishing maid and a dying squire’s desperate obsession with a single date. Within these crumbling walls, the living and the dead seem to trade places in the shadows.
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 Wonderful Story of Blue Beard, and His Last Wife
Unknown
A wealthy recluse with a peculiar deformity marries a beautiful young woman, only to test her obedience by forbidding her access to a single, mysterious room. This chilling fairy tale explores the dark intersection of curiosity, control, and consequence.
Wise Saws and Modern Instances, Volume 2 (of 2)
Thomas Cooper
This collection of stories captures the shifting social fabric of 19th-century England, moving between rural superstition and the harsh, impersonal machinery of urban commerce. It chronicles the lives of those caught in the friction of a changing world.
Young Mr. Barter's Repentance: From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray
David Christie Murray
When a sudden financial collapse shatters a reputable London merchant, a trail of missing bank-notes unleashes a tangled web of greed, blackmail, and desperate deceit.
A. V. Laider
Beerbohm, Max, Sir
A chance encounter in a desolate seaside hostel spirals into a haunting, confession-filled mystery. Between two convalescents, the boundaries of truth and fiction blur until the storyteller’s own identity becomes the ultimate riddle.
John Ingerfield, and Other Stories
Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka) Jerome
Money, duty, and quiet tragedy interweave across nineteenth-century London and desolate foreign landscapes, where pride continuously wars with human warmth.
Drifted ashore
Evelyn Everett-Green
The sea gives and the sea takes, but in this quiet corner of the world, a forgotten boy cast ashore by the tide finds a home in a heart long closed to others.
Jane Shore
Nicholas Rowe
A fallen favorite of the late King Edward IV struggles to survive amidst the brutal political rise of the Duke of Gloster. It is a stark, mournful tragedy of betrayal, penance, and the cruelty of power.
Miscellaneous Pieces
John Bunyan
This collection of spiritual reflections and practical guidance offers a window into the intense, unyielding faith of a seventeenth-century writer, capturing the urgency of a soul focused entirely on the afterlife. It serves as a stern, deeply personal manual for navigating the trials of conscience and the…
The Advanced-Guard
Sydney C. Grier
In the volatile, sun-scorched province of Khemistan, a small band of British officers and their families face the dual trials of political insurrection and personal moral crisis. The frontier is a place where professional duty frequently demands the sacrifice of private conscience.
The House of Defence v. 2
E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
A husband’s descent into addiction and a marriage hollowed by mutual resentment find an unlikely resolution through the intervention of a spiritual healer.
The law of copyright
William Wordsworth
An aging poet steps out of privacy to publish a public declaration supporting parliamentary reform for authorial property rights.
Dwell Deep
Amy Le Feuvre
A young woman holding fast to her Christian convictions faces the push and pull of high-society expectations, finding that standing quiet and firm transforms both her own life and the lives of those around her.
No Man's Land
H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
The mundane reality of the trenches contrasts sharply with the romanticized visions of war held by those at home. This collection of sketches captures the grit, humor, and tragic transformation of the individual infantryman.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914
Various
An April week in 1914 yields a vivid snapshot of pre-war Britain, where high politics, domestic absurdity, and modern anxieties collide with sharp, unyielding satire.
The Chateau of Prince Polignac
Anthony Trollope
This story captures a quiet, late-life courtship between an English widow and a French tradesman. It explores the tension between romantic artifice and the practical, often unglamorous, realities of building a second life.
The Christmas dinner, from "The sketch book"
Washington Irving
A festive gathering at a storied manor house revives the warmth of a bygone age, proving that a light heart and a generous spirit are the true anchors of tradition.
The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature: Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition"
Thomas Henry Huxley
A sharp, reasoned defense of scientific inquiry, this essay systematically dismantles the attempt to force modern biological discovery into the narrative framework of ancient religious texts.
The skipper's wooing, and The brown man's servant
W. W. (William Wymark) Jacobs
A quiet Thames skipper, a lost sea captain, and an ill-gotten diamond prove that everyday human folly and dark misfortune travel on the very same tide.
A wilful ward
Ruth Lamb
The impulsive nature of a young woman tests the boundaries of her guardianship, leading to a journey of profound personal transformation. She must learn to navigate the consequences of her own choices before finding true peace.
Seven Poems and a Fragment
W. B. (William Butler) Yeats
The world is a labyrinth of shadows and shifting moons, where the only triumph is the soul’s final, lonely retreat into the truth.
The Council of Seven
J. C. (John Collis) Snaith
A principled man, haunted by a shadowy cabal of global elites, struggles against a media titan whose reach threatens the very foundation of free nations.
The Hampstead mystery: a novel. Volume 3 (of 3)
Florence Marryat
A domestic facade crumbles as a man’s secret guilt transforms his family home into a prison of paranoia and recrimination. This narrative probes the heavy toll of concealment on those bound by blood and faith.
The Last Laugh
D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
A midnight encounter on a snow-swept Hampstead street pulls two friends into the orbit of an invisible, mocking presence that shatters their perceptions of love, soul, and human dignity.
The Limit
Ada Leverson
A refined exploration of marital unspokenness, where the quiet, steady husband and his charming, restless wife navigate the delicate, shifting boundaries of a social circle centered on a magnetic but hollow cousin.
A House in Bloomsbury
Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
A quiet London boarding house becomes the stage for a collision between long-buried secrets and the hopeful, fumbling lives of the next generation. This story explores how the rigid boundaries of social propriety and the weight of past sorrows shape the identities of those living in their shadow.
A moment of madness, and other stories (vol. 1 of 3)
Florence Marryat
Domestic dissatisfaction, impulsive romance, and the heavy weight of social expectation define this collection of Victorian tales. These stories offer a window into the private anxieties of a vanished era, where personal longing often collided with rigid moral duty.
Coquette
Frank Swinnerton
The story of a young woman’s ruthless pursuit of social standing, this novel tracks the transformation of a clever, ambitious dressmaker as she navigates the suffocating constraints of her working-class life.
Glenarvon, Volume 3 (of 3)
Lamb, Caroline, Lady
A haunting descent into the wreckage of lives undone by obsession, this final movement of a notorious roman à clef maps the inevitable collapse of its protagonists under the weight of their own destructive passions.
Legend
Clemence Dane
A woman’s death sparks a bitter competition among her self-proclaimed inner circle to define her legacy. In the wake of her passing, the truth of her life is obscured by the projections of those she left behind.
Macmillan's Three-and-Sixpenny Library of Books by Popular Authors December 1905
Macmillan & Co.
This catalog offers a comprehensive glimpse into the literary landscape of the Edwardian era, serving as a meticulously curated inventory of the foundational texts that defined the British reading experience at the turn of the twentieth century.
Memorials and Other Papers
Thomas De Quincey
A brilliant, idiosyncratic mind navigates the boundaries between personal trauma and public history. These essays transform the act of remembering into a profound exploration of human character, classical learning, and the weight of the past.
Murder in the maze
J. J. Connington
In a quiet corner of the English countryside, a lethal game of cat-and-mouse unfolds within a garden maze, where poisoned darts turn a restful estate into a site of cold-blooded execution.
My Lord Duke
E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
A rough-hewn Australian bushman is thrust into the English aristocracy, only to discover that his hard-won title and fortune may belong to someone else—or to no one at all.**
Night Must Fall
Emlyn Williams
HOOK A charismatic stranger charms his way into an isolated household, masking a predatory darkness with a smile. Beneath the domestic surface of a quiet English bungalow, a chilling psychological game unfolds.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 108, January 26, 1895
Various
This collection serves as a vibrant, weekly snapshot of late Victorian cultural life, blending sharp political satire with the whimsical social observations of a bygone London era.