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Essays, Letters & Speeches — page 17
1,906 public-domain essays, letters & speeches books, summarised. Page 17 of 40.
Myth and Science: An Essay
Tito Vignoli
This essay explores the deep psychological origins of human belief, arguing that myth and science are not opposites but dual branches growing from the same fundamental urge to interpret an active, living world.
Poetry
Arthur Quiller-Couch
Poetry offers an elegant, philosophical defense of the poet’s role as an interpreter of the universe, arguing that the creation of art is a fundamental, divine human impulse. It provides a timeless map for understanding how literature bridges the gap between our internal lives and the ordered rhythm of existence.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 26, December, 1859: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
This volume captures the intellectual pulse of late 1859, blending firsthand accounts of military adventure, literary criticism, and the shifting social tides of mid-nineteenth-century America.
Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854)
Unknown
The struggle for human liberty is a relentless tide, and these collected voices serve as a vital, enduring record of the moral necessity to break the chains of the enslaved.
Books and Bookmen
Andrew Lang
A charming, erudite meditation on the quiet madness of collecting, where the pursuit of rare volumes and the ghost-tales of literary history reveal the incurable, delightful hunger of the bibliophile.
Poets and Dreamers: Studies and translations from the Irish
Lady Gregory
The Irish landscape of the nineteenth century persists through the songs of the dispossessed, captured here before the oral tradition vanished forever. This collection serves as a vital bridge between the fading world of the Gaelic hedge-poet and the preservation of a national identity.
Discipline and Other Sermons
Charles Kingsley
Character, duty, and spiritual order converge to form a steady compass for navigating a rapidly changing world.
Outings at Odd Times
Charles C. (Charles Conrad) Abbott
A quiet stroll through the New Jersey countryside reveals a world teeming with overlooked wonder, where natural history meets local memory.
Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes
J. M. Judy
A practical guide to personal morality that insists Christians must offer vibrant, joyful alternatives to the sins they condemn.
The Invention of a New Religion
Basil Hall Chamberlain
What happens when a modern state invents an ancient tradition to unify its people? This sharp 1912 tract exposes how Japan's ruling class manufactured Emperor-worship to consolidate power at home and project strength abroad.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 398, December 1848
Various
A rich mid-nineteenth-century literary mosaic blends sharp political polemic, dramatic serialized fiction, high art criticism, and seafaring narrative into a single vivid cultural artifact.
The religion of Plutarch
John Oakesmith
In an age of shifting beliefs, a priest of Delphi seeks to harmonize ancient faith with cool reason.
Among the Forces
Henry White Warren
Visible and invisible forces pulse through the physical world, operating as obedient agents ready to serve humanity’s highest practical, scientific, and spiritual endeavors.
An Essay on the Trial By Jury
Lysander Spooner
Governments routinely enforce tyrannical acts by manipulating the court system, but true freedom requires that citizens retain absolute power to judge the justice of the laws themselves.
Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 08 (of 20)
Charles Sumner
A single Senate chamber becomes the high-stakes battleground where legal precedent, international diplomacy, and the moral imperative to destroy human bondage collide during the darkest hours of the American Civil War.
Hortus Vitae: Essays on the Gardening of Life
Vernon Lee
Cultivating happiness requires modest boundaries, deliberate attention, and a willingness to step back from the world's exhausting clutter.
The Great War in Verse and Prose
Unknown
A solemn, urgent summons sounds across continents as a global alliance rallies to defend human liberty against an aggressive, autocratic onslaught.
Universal Brotherhood, Volume XIII, No. 10, January 1899: A Magazine Devoted to the Brotherhood of Humanity, the Theosophical Movement, Philosophy, Science and Art
Various
A turn-of-the-century collection of essays and stories maps the human spirit through the combined lenses of Theosophical doctrine, political biography, and practical ethics.
Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Henry Lawson
Henry Lawson
Rough dust, sun-bleached tracks, and the quiet dignity of working outcasts shape an unsparing portrait of Australia’s bush. These gathered works record the humor, heartbreak, and fierce companionship of people trying to survive at the edge of the world.
Palmetto-Leaves
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Escaping the harsh winters of the North for a sunny refuge along the St. Johns River, a writer discovers that building a home in Florida requires equal parts patience, labor, and quiet wonder.
Selections from Erasmus: Principally from his Epistles
Desiderius Erasmus
Human connections, intellectual disputes, and everyday travel hazards define a scholar navigating the high expectations and turbulent waters of Renaissance Europe.
The Cutting of an Agate
W. B. (William Butler) Yeats
Art is not made by detached logic, but carved out of personal passion, living speech, and ancient memory. These essays examine how genuine beauty survives only when rooted in emotion, tradition, and the discipline of the human soul.
A Confession of St. Augustine
William Dean Howells
The fading winter sun of a bypassed era illuminates this meditative account, where the quiet rhythms of an aging city offer more solace than the frantic progress of the modern world.
Oratory Sacred and Secular
William Pittenger
Mastering the art of public speech requires far more than physical bravery or sudden inspiration. It demands a rigorous foundation of inner conviction, methodical mental preparation, and total control over one's own voice and body.
Right Above Race
Otto H. Kahn
A foreign-born financier confronts the tragic transformation of his former homeland, urging his fellow naturalized citizens to choose the moral demands of liberty over the emotional pulls of ancestral lineage during a world-shattering conflict.
The Knickerbocker, Vol. 22, No. 6, December 1843
Various
Across essays, narrative fiction, and social satire, this miscellany captures the vibrant, emerging intellectual culture of mid-nineteenth-century America.
Of the Injustice of Counterfeiting Books: From: Essays and Treaties on Moral, Political and various Philosophical Subjects
Immanuel Kant
Kant demonstrates why reprinting another’s published text without authorization violates fundamental principles of property and agency, framing the printed word not as a physical commodity, but as a personal, irredeemable act of public speech.
Satires and Profanities
James Thomson
A incisive freethought critic tears through religious orthodoxies and institutional hypocrisies with unsparing satirical wit.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
A single issue of a Civil War–era magazine captures a nation in motion through health manifestos, gothic tales, political histories, wilderness travel, and personal eulogies.
The Blight of Respectability: An Anatomy of the Disease and a Theory of Curative Treatment
Geoffrey Mortimer
Conformity disguises itself as virtue, silencing original thought and turning whole classes into anxious performers of gentility.
The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. 01
Unknown
An extraordinary, unvarnished look at the birth of American foreign policy reveals a fledgling nation fighting for its life not only on the battlefield, but across the mahogany tables of European diplomacy.
Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864: Devoted to Literature and National Policy
Various
A mid-war monthly magazine brings the intellectual fever of 1864 into sharp focus, balancing fierce Civil War politics with literary drama, scientific geography, and philosophical debates.
Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Volume 2
Alexis de Tocqueville
A nation surrenders its newfound liberty to a autocratic ruler, leaving two political thinkers across the English Channel to trace how fear and executive overreach dismantled a republic.
Essays in Librarianship and Bibliography
Richard Garnett
A passionate defense of scientific methodology in the preservation and classification of books reveals how administrative rigor safeguards human knowledge for posterity.
Poems of Giosuè Carducci, Translated with two introductory essays:: I. Giosuè Carducci and the Hellenic reaction in Italy. II. Carducci and the classic realism
Giosuè Carducci
A fiery reclamation of classical beauty strikes through the gloom of rigid dogma and forgotten national pride.
Pogonologia
J.-A. (Jacques-Antoine) Dulaure
A century of shaving has erased the visible boundary between sexes, leaving men as smooth-skinned, soft, and indecisive as the women they seek to command.
The Confessions of a Daddy
Ellis Parker Butler
When a carefree Colorado couple boasts about avoiding the expense and mess of children, life takes a quiet, devastating turn when they look across the fence and realize exactly what they are missing.
A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up
Thomas Paine
Mistakes in a foreign historian's account of the American Revolution prompt a clear-eyed defense of the uprising's true origin, military reality, and global impact.
Love, Life & Work: Being a Book of Opinions Reasonably Good-Natured Concerning How to Attain the Highest Happiness for One's Self with the Least Possible Harm to Others
Elbert Hubbard
This collection of essays serves as a practical, idiosyncratic manual for navigating the complexities of human existence. It argues that personal fulfillment is not found in dogma or status, but through the deliberate cultivation of a radiant, useful, and independent character.
Toasts and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say the Right Thing in the Right Way
William Pittenger
Master the art of the podium with this comprehensive guide to public speaking, designed to help you craft the perfect toast, address, or response for any social or formal occasion.
A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, Part III., 1794: Described in a Series of Letters from an English Lady: with General and Incidental Remarks on the French Character and Manners
Charlotte Biggs
A foreign observer finds herself trapped in the heart of the French Revolution, chronicling a society where the promises of philosophy dissolve into the grim realities of the guillotine, hunger, and arbitrary terror.
An Introduction to the Study of Browning
Arthur Symons
This guide offers a dedicated, chronological exploration of a major Victorian poet’s life work, mapping the development of his dramatic technique and his complex philosophy of the human soul.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine
Various
This collection of nineteenth-century periodical writing serves as a vast, panoramic window into the Victorian mind, capturing the urgent anxieties and expansive curiosities of a world in rapid transition. It is a record of an era grappling with the dizzying pace of its own industrial and imperial progress.
Dante Alighieri, Apostle of Freedom: War-time and Peace-time Essays
Lonsdale Ragg
Dante stands as a timeless beacon for humanity, his verses offering both a mirror to the soul’s deepest struggles and a rallying cry for the enduring cause of political and spiritual freedom.
Representative British Orations Volume 2 (of 4): With Introductions and Explanatory Notes
Unknown
These records capture the high-stakes oratory of a pivotal era, preserving the voices of statesmen and advocates as they grappled with the shadow of Napoleon and the definition of English liberty.
![Cover of Social Rights And Duties: Addresses to Ethical Societies. Vol 1 [of 2]](https://cdn.myebooksbuy.com/c/social-rights-and-duties-addresses-to-ethical-societies-vol-1-of-2.webp)
Social Rights And Duties: Addresses to Ethical Societies. Vol 1 [of 2]
Leslie Stephen
Through the lens of evolutionary biology and social history, these lectures examine the balance between individual responsibility and the collective welfare of a complex, modern society.
The attaché at Peking
Redesdale, Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford, Baron
The nineteenth-century diplomatic world of Peking comes alive in these intimate, observant letters, which capture the fading rhythms of an ancient empire navigating the intrusive pressures of the modern age.
English Pictures Drawn with Pen and Pencil
Samuel Manning
England is a land where history, literature, and landscape intertwine, offering a quiet sanctuary for the weary city dweller. This travelogue serves as a guide to the country’s most evocative and spiritually grounding regions.