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British Literature — page 89
6,210 public-domain british literature books, summarised. Page 89 of 130.
Abracadabra & other satires
John Galsworthy
These sketches capture the quiet absurdities of early twentieth-century British life, where social pretension, fleeting kindness, and the rigid walls of class collide in a dance of gentle, biting irony.
Bertha's Visit to Her Uncle in England
Mrs. (Jane Haldimand) Marcet
This educational epistolary chronicle invites readers into a quiet world of Victorian-era discovery, where the wonders of natural science, geography, and moral philosophy are shared through the intimate correspondence of a young girl visiting her kin.
Blue-Stocking Hall, (Vol. 1 of 3)
William Pitt Scargill
A young man discovers that his prejudice against intellectual women is entirely misplaced when he finds himself welcomed into the warm, vibrant life of a secluded Irish estate.
By Birth a Lady
George Manville Fenn
A young man’s tangled path toward love and duty leads him through social artifice, heartbreak, and a life-altering realization of character. This story explores how true nobility is defined not by pedigree, but by the integrity of one's actions.
Coriolanus
William Shakespeare
A soldier of peerless talent finds himself undone by his own contempt for the people he protects. This searing drama explores the collision between rigid individual honor and the messy, democratic demands of the state.
Interim
Dorothy M. (Dorothy Miller) Richardson
A young woman navigates the precarious independence of early 20th-century London, seeking moments of internal stillness amidst the suffocating, watchful expectations of her social and professional circles.
Kissing the Rod: A Novel. (Vol. 1 of 3)
Edmund Yates
A man of commerce finds his life upended by a sudden, consuming obsession with a woman who exists in a world entirely separate from his own. This is a story of social ambition, calculated deception, and the heavy price of living a lie.
Moufflou, and other stories
Ouida
This collection of three stories explores the quiet, profound intersections between human emotion and the natural world, illustrating how ambition, sacrifice, and love shape the lives of the humble and the proud alike.
Mrs. Dorriman: A Novel. Volume 1 of 3
Chetwynd, Henry Wayland, Mrs.
A timid, self-doubting woman finds her quiet life upended when she must navigate the domineering demands of her brother and the volatile ambitions of two young wards left in his charge.
Only an Ensign: A Tale of the Retreat from Cabul, Volume 1 (of 3)
James Grant
A secret marriage, a stolen inheritance, and the looming shadows of war define the struggles of a young woman thrust into a world of family betrayal and sudden, tragic loss.
Patience Wins: War in the Works
George Manville Fenn
HO0K: A young man navigates the escalating dangers of a strike at his family’s new steel works. Through steadfast resolve and courageous action, he gradually transforms a hostile workforce into a loyal community.
Polly: A New-Fashioned Girl
L. T. Meade
Six motherless sisters and two wild Australian cousins collide in a rambling English vicarage, where independence and fiery tempers spark domestic chaos.
Sue, A Little Heroine
L. T. Meade
A young London girl takes the blame for a theft to save her father, enduring trials among the city's poorest while her crippled brother waits for her return.
The Earl of Essex: A Tragedy, in Five Acts
Henry Jones
The pride of a queen and the ambition of her favorite collide in this sweeping drama of political intrigue, where a single, withheld token of mercy seals a tragic fate.
The Fortunes of the Farrells
Vaizey, George de Horne, Mrs.
A unexpected inheritance test pits moneyed comfort against quiet integrity.
The making of a woman
Amy Le Feuvre
HOOK A young woman struggles to break free from the stifling control of her grandfather to pursue her artistic ambitions, only to discover that her true purpose lies in service to others.
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 265, July 21, 1827
Various
This early nineteenth-century miscellany gathers local history, eccentric profiles, Whitsuntide revels, and global travel in a lively snapshot of Georgian popular culture.
The Scribleriad, and The Difference Between Verbal and Practical Virtue
Anonymous
The literary feuds of the eighteenth century reached a fever pitch in 1742, transforming the London printing houses into a battlefield of biting verse and personal invective. These polemical works serve as a sharp, often savage, record of a culture obsessed with status, reputation, and the power of the printed word.
The Standard Bearer
S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett
A young man’s quiet, uncertain hand attempts to hold the Banner of Blue aloft during Scotland’s turbulent era of religious persecution.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
William Shakespeare
Two friends find their bond tested by love and betrayal in a tale that explores the shifting loyalties of youth. It is a story of hearts misplaced, disguised, and ultimately reclaimed.
The Wings of Icarus: Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher
Laurence Alma-Tadema
The wings of Icarus carry this protagonist toward a sun of her own making, only for the wax of her ideals to melt beneath the heat of human frailty.
Two Sides of the Face: Midwinter Tales
Arthur Quiller-Couch
These tales explore the blurred edges of the Cornish landscape, where ancient feuds, hidden inheritances, and spectral warnings rise out of the fog to haunt the modern world.
Vagabondia: 1884
Frances Hodgson Burnett
The charm of this domestic portrait lies in its candid, affectionate gaze at a struggling household of artists, where love and loyalty serve as the only reliable currency. It is a story of resilience, finding grace in the small, chaotic triumphs of a family living on the frayed edges of Victorian society.
Wild Flowers
Robert Bloomfield
A collection of verse rooted in the fields and hearths of rural England, this work captures the modest joys, provincial customs, and quiet anxieties of the laboring class with gentle, observant affection.
A London Plane-Tree, and Other Verse
Amy Levy
This collection of late nineteenth-century poetry offers an intimate, piercing look at the melancholy of urban life and the elusive nature of memory. It is a portrait of a mind observing the world from the periphery of both geography and emotion, capturing the specific, grey beauty of a city that never quite feels…
About Peggy Saville
Vaizey, George de Horne, Mrs.
The lively, perceptive new girl at a country vicarage discovers that the true measure of character lies not in quick-witted arrogance, but in the difficult, unglamorous work of caring for others.
Andrew Golding: A Tale of the Great Plague
Anne E. Keeling
A young woman chronicles a harrowing journey through the heart of 1665 London, seeking a lost kinsman amidst the suffocating terror of the Great Plague.
Brief Diversions: Being Tales, Travesties and Epigrams
J. B. (John Boynton) Priestley
This collection gathers the whimsical and the biting, offering a glimpse into a young writer’s mind as he navigates the intersection of mythology, social satire, and literary parody. It is a sharp, playful assembly of wit from the early twentieth century.
Drawing Rooms, Second Floor, and Attics: A Farce, in One Act
John Maddison Morton
A young chemist’s frantic, soot-stained quest to find his sweetheart in London turns into a chaotic game of hide-and-seek throughout a multi-story house.
Frederica and her Guardians
Margaret M. (Margaret Murray) Robertson
This novel follows the spiritual and physical maturation of a young girl navigating the loss of her parents and the religious tensions surrounding her family’s future. It is a story of quiet endurance and the search for authentic faith.
Hildebrand
Anonymous
This historical romance captures the turbulent, shifting loyalties of Elizabethan England through the eyes of a young traveler caught in a web of religious intrigue and personal danger. It is a work of high stakes, where the quiet of a country estate is frequently shattered by the sudden, heavy hand of political…
Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary
Anne Manning
This is an intimate, reimagined portrait of the domestic life of a giant of English literature, told through the eyes of the women who lived in his shadow. It captures the friction between high-minded intellectual ambition and the mundane, often difficult realities of maintaining a household.
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.
Noughts and Crosses: Stories, Studies and Sketches
Arthur Quiller-Couch
The human heart is a complex theater where the ordinary and the extraordinary collide, often leaving behind only the quiet echoes of joy or the heavy silence of regret.
Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days
Emily Henrietta Hickey
An essential tradition of pre-Conquest English poetry and prose reveals how deeply a Christian worldview shaped the nation's earliest literary expression.
Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694)
Lawrence Echard
In late seventeenth-century England, a young Cambridge translator set out to strip Roman comedy of its dust and deliver its vibrant, theatrical spark directly to the Restoration stage.
Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650): Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Beneath the solemn quiet of dusk and the sudden lightning of grief, a devoted reader steps forward to construct a monument out of fourteen-line verses. Through praise, rage, and reverence, these poems turn the art of memory into an act of worship.
The Actress in High Life: An Episode in Winter Quarters
Sue Petigru Bowen
In the shadow of the Napoleonic Wars, a spirited noblewoman and an enigmatic colonel navigate a web of social performance, military duty, and deepening affection within the desolate winter quarters of Portugal.
The Antiquary
Walter Scott
A grumpy, learned antiquarian finds his quiet life upended when a mysterious young man, a failing baronet, and a wandering beggar pull him into a drama of hidden identities and lost family legacies.
The Lame Lover: A Comedy in Three Acts
Samuel Foote
In a world of professional liars, a man who has lost a leg to a misfortune discovers that the truth is the most inconvenient accessory of all. This sharp, biting farce exposes the vanity of the legal profession and the absurdity of high-society manners in the eighteenth century.
The Lanchester tradition
G. F. (Godfrey Fox) Bradby
The ghosts of great men rarely sleep peacefully, and at Chiltern School, the shadow of a legendary former headmaster threatens to stifle every spark of modern change.
The Lay of Marie and Vignettes in Verse
Matilda Betham
A tribute to the medieval spirit, this collection weaves the legend of a forgotten female minstrel into a series of romantic verse narratives, exploring the intersection of chivalric duty and the hidden, personal life.
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 Old Pincushion
Mrs. Molesworth
The sudden disappearance of a family inheritance leaves two children stranded, but a series of small, domestic accidents leads them to an unexpected discovery.
The Story of a Baby
Ethel Turner
A young couple’s domestic bliss unravels into a haunting struggle for possession, testing the boundaries of love, duty, and individual ambition in the sprawling landscape of colonial Australia.
The Tragic Bride
Francis Brett Young
Gabrielle Hewish is a girl born into the decaying isolation of an Irish estate, whose life is irrevocably altered by a brief, doomed romance and a subsequent, suffocating marriage. Her story is a quiet, haunting study of emotional numbness and the dangerous, transformative power of connection.
The Yellow Flag: A Novel. Volume 2 (of 3)
Edmund Yates
The sudden death of a wealthy businessman on a lonely road, rather than in the expected railway carriage, pulls the threads of a double life taut, revealing secrets that threaten to unravel multiple households.
A bankrupt heart, Vol. 3 (of 3)
Florence Marryat
A woman’s past and present collide in this Victorian drama of misplaced loyalty, ruinous secrets, and the heavy price of social standing. The narrative traces the convergence of two women bound to the same man by vastly different ties.