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Essays, Letters & Speeches — page 17
1,400 public-domain essays, letters & speeches books, summarised. Page 17 of 30.
Paris and the Parisians in 1835 (Vol. 1)
Frances Milton Trollope
The streets of Paris in 1835 are a kaleidoscope of political tension and social charm, captured here by a keen, unsparing observer who navigates the city’s theaters, gardens, and shifting loyalties with discerning curiosity.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 72, October, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
This collection captures the intellectual pulse of the American Civil War era, blending urgent political inquiry with literary reflection and the quiet, persistent pursuit of truth during a national rupture.
Points of View
Agnes Repplier
The act of reading is not a duty to be performed with grim earnestness, but a living invitation to be merry, curious, and perhaps even delightfully foolish.
South-Sea Idyls
Charles Warren Stoddard
An island wanderer drifts through a life of tropical ease, finding beauty in the natural world while observing the fragile, fading existence of the people he encounters in Oceania.
The Seven Ages of Man
Ralph Bergengren
The human journey is a series of quiet, often absurd transformations, from the helpless infant to the sage who eventually finds the exit. This reflective guide maps the familiar terrain of a life, one stage at a time.
Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1
John Bright
The path of a nation is not charted by the clamor of the elite, but by the steady, moral pressure of the people. These pages capture a voice that dared to challenge the conscience of an empire.
The Revival of Irish Literature: Addresses by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, K.C.M.G, Dr. George Sigerson, and Dr. Douglas Hyde
Duffy, Charles Gavan, Sir
A collection of three impassioned addresses, this volume serves as a manifesto for the Irish Literary Revival, urging a displaced and demoralized people to reclaim their intellectual heritage as the foundation for true national independence.
The Superstition of Divorce
G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
Divorce is not a personal escape, but a political act that threatens the fragile autonomy of the family against the encroaching power of the state.
Widger's Quotations from the Project Gutenberg Editions of the Works of Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
To read these reflections is to spend time in the company of a mind that finds its greatest subject in the mirror. It is a wandering, honest examination of what it means to be human, written by a man who prefers the truth of his own experience to the certainty of accepted wisdom.
Joyce Kilmer
Joyce Kilmer
This collection of prose captures the spirit of a devoted writer, father, and soldier, documenting his transformation from a literary critic in New York to a sergeant in the American Expeditionary Forces. It offers an intimate window into a brief, vibrant life cut short by the First World War.
True Words for Brave Men: A Book for Soldiers' and Sailors' Libraries
Charles Kingsley
These sermons and lectures offer a bracing, heartfelt call to duty, urging soldiers and sailors to find strength in faith, courage in adversity, and a sense of shared humanity.**
What to Do? Thoughts Evoked by the Census of Moscow
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Seeking to reconcile the vast chasm between his own idle, privileged existence and the crushing poverty of Moscow’s underclass, a writer undergoes a profound moral awakening. This account of his struggle to live a more authentic life remains a piercing meditation on the ethics of wealth and the true meaning of labor.
Among My Books. Second Series
James Russell Lowell
HOOK Literature serves as a bridge between our fleeting human experiences and the eternal truths of art. These essays explore that connection through the lives and enduring legacies of five foundational poets.
By-gone Tourist Days: Letters of Travel
Laura G. Case Collins
A curious traveler finds herself caught between the grand, ancient monuments of the Old World and the quiet, personal intensity of the letters she writes home to her friends.
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.