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Essays, Letters & Speeches — page 2
110 public-domain essays, letters & speeches books, summarised. Page 2 of 3.
Aspects of the novel
E. M. (Edward Morgan) Forster
A warm, conversational investigation into the mechanics of fiction, these lectures invite readers to look over the shoulders of novelists as they create the complex, "soggy" reality we call a book.
Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens
G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
A spirited defense of Charles Dickens's genius, blending appreciation with criticism.
Penguin Persons & Peppermints
Walter Prichard Eaton
A collection of essays explores the charm and nostalgia of everyday life, from childhood memories to the beauty of nature.
Chapters in Rural Progress
Kenyon L. (Kenyon Leech) Butterfield
Improving the quality of rural life requires more than just better crops; it demands a deliberate, coordinated effort to elevate the social, intellectual, and institutional standards of the American farming class.
The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851
Various
This mid-century periodical captures the intellectual fervor and social anxieties of 1851, offering a vibrant mosaic of literature, global politics, and the relentless march of human progress.
The Bibliotaph, and Other People
Leon H. (Leon Henry) Vincent
A collection of observant literary sketches that explores the lives of writers and the quiet, obsessive habits of those who love books most dearly.
The Advancement of Learning
Francis Bacon
Knowledge is not a stagnant treasure to be guarded, but a vast field waiting to be cultivated. The progress of humanity depends upon our willingness to map what we know and identify the fertile, unplowed ground of what we have yet to discover.
The Wit of Women: Fourth Edition
Kate Sanborn
Discover a vibrant tapestry of humor, wit, and sharp insight woven by women across centuries, revealing their overlooked brilliance in laughter and satire.
Terribly Intimate Portraits
Noël Coward
This collection of lampoons offers a sharp, satirical look at the pomposity of historical biography, framing the lives of absurd, invented figures with the mock-earnestness of a scholar. It is a playful exercise in sustained irony, where the pretense of rigorous research serves only to highlight the ridiculous…
In Nesting Time
Olive Thorne Miller
The soul of the bird is not found in a specimen case, but in the patient, observant study of a living, breathing individual.
Book of Wise Sayings: Selected Largely from Eastern Sources
W. A. (William Alexander) Clouston
Pithy observations on the human condition transcend geography and time, offering a perennial guide for the practical, moral, and intellectual challenges of daily existence.
More Science from an Easy Chair
Lankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
Science is a conversation, not a catalog, and these pages invite the reader to pull up a chair and listen to the natural world’s most curious secrets.
Creative Unity
Rabindranath Tagore
To perceive the world as a singular, harmonious whole is the highest calling of the human spirit. The capacity to bridge the divide between the individual and the infinite is the ultimate, unifying truth of our existence.
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03 (of 12)
Edmund Burke
The power of oratory lies in its capacity to hold authority to account, transforming the dry mechanics of governance into a searing, moral struggle for the soul of a nation.
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, December 1878
Various
The December 1878 issue of Lippincott’s Magazine offers a varied collection of travelogues, cultural criticism, and fiction, capturing the global curiosity and social preoccupations of the late nineteenth century.
War and the Weird
Forbes Phillips
The trenches of the Great War become a thin place, where the mundane realities of mud and shrapnel collide with the persistent, haunting whispers of the supernatural.
Chimney-Pot Papers
Charles S. (Charles Stephen) Brooks
The chimney-pot perspective offers a quiet, elevated vantage point from which to observe the human comedy, proving that the most profound adventures often happen within the radius of one's own neighborhood.
Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 3: Essays on Literature, Biography, and Antiquities
F. Max (Friedrich Max) Müller
HOOK This collection of essays explores the deep intellectual and cultural currents linking Germany and England, bridging the gap between ancient folklore and modern critical inquiry.
A Handful of Stars: Texts That Have Moved Great Minds
Frank Boreham
A collection of meditations on the power of Scripture, this work traces how specific verses have acted as spiritual anchors for historical figures and characters of literature alike. It suggests that the most profound human experiences are often crystallized by a single, recurring line of text.
A Lecture on the Study of History
Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, Baron
History is the continuous, unfolding record of human progress toward freedom, demanding that we judge the past not by our own shifting prejudices, but by the exacting, objective standards of critical inquiry.
Progress and History
Unknown
The story of human advancement is not a linear march toward perfection, but a complex, often stumbling effort to harmonize our knowledge, our moral nature, and our creative will. This volume explores how humanity builds upon its past, not by erasing it, but by integrating it into a more conscious, unified future.
Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905
Various
A turn-of-the-century tapestry captures the friction of arranged marriages, Wall Street panics, high-society theatrics, and small-town grudges. It paints an unvarnished portrait of American ambition and emotional longing in 1905.
The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893: An Illustrated Monthly
Various
A vibrant, turn-of-the-century collection of voices, this magazine captures the wit, anxieties, and curious diversions of late Victorian London through a blend of gritty realism and whimsical observation.
Letters of Pliny
the Younger Pliny
A Roman official’s private correspondence offers a vivid, unfiltered look at the daily anxieties, cultural obsessions, and administrative burdens of a man navigating the corridors of imperial power.
Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
These essays offer a panoramic view of the English past, written by a master of narrative history who treats the struggles of kings, poets, and parliamentarians as a vibrant, living drama.
Pearls of Thought
Maturin M. (Maturin Murray) Ballou
This collection offers a treasury of distilled wisdom, gathering centuries of observation into a single, accessible volume. It serves as a thoughtful companion for those who seek to examine life through the lenses of history’s keenest minds.
The Federalist Papers
Alexander Hamilton
These essays serve as a rigorous, point-by-point defense of the American Constitution, arguing that a unified national government is the only reliable bulwark against internal faction, foreign interference, and the inevitable collapse of the states.
The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
The human mind is a battlefield where we fight not for truth, but for victory. This collection of posthumous writings captures a brilliant, cynical, and relentlessly honest map of that struggle.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847
Various
A multifaceted window into the nineteenth-century intellectual landscape, this collection captures the era’s urgent debates on political philosophy, folklore, and the shifting boundaries of social morality.
A Tramp's Notebook
Morley Roberts
These sketches capture the raw edges of a life lived in motion, finding both exhaustion and sudden, quiet epiphanies across the landscapes of the late nineteenth-century world.
Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford: In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew
Edward Berens
Navigating the threshold of adulthood requires both moral fortitude and practical wisdom. These letters offer a steady, guiding hand to any young person standing at the precipice of a new, demanding chapter in their life.
Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
Henri Bergson
The mechanism of laughter is a social corrective, a fleeting rebellion against the rigidity of life that reveals the inherent absurdity of human habits and mechanical movements.
The Common Reader
Virginia Woolf
The act of reading is not a scholarly chore but a vibrant, communal engagement with the soul of literature. By celebrating the perspective of the "common reader," these essays reclaim the joy of books from the heavy hand of academic dogma.
Heretics
G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
The central argument is that the modern world is not suffering from a lack of facts or science, but from a fatal erosion of philosophy and the loss of a clear, dogmatic center to life.
Historical Essays
James Ford Rhodes
This collection of essays serves as a scholarly guide for those who seek to understand the historian’s craft through the lens of nineteenth-century political experience. It bridges the gap between grand historical narrative and the practical, often messy realities of governance and public life.
Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 1 of 3: I. Prolegomena II. Achæis
W. E. (William Ewart) Gladstone
This examination of the Homeric epics argues that the Iliad and Odyssey are not merely works of poetic imagination, but fundamental historical documents. It posits that the poems offer a reliable, contemporary record of an ancient civilization, capturing the ethnology, politics, and social structures of the early…
The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
A fierce critique of intellectual vanity exposes how rare genuine thought remains in a world obsessed with superficial chatter and immediate fame. True mastery demands independent vision, unyielding discipline, and complete indifference to contemporary approval.
Aesthetical Essays of Friedrich Schiller
Friedrich Schiller
A philosophical inquiry into art reveals that human freedom requires an aesthetic mediator to bridge the raw demands of physical nature and the strict laws of reason.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847
Various
A ambitious Scottish periodical scans the map of global empire, weighing the costs of expansion, the pull of poetry, and the strange mechanics of human behavior.
State of the Union Addresses (1790-2008)
United States. Presidents
Across two centuries of executive addresses, the leaders of an expanding republic debate the boundaries of federal power, the cost of war, and the duties owed to a self-governing citizenry.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics
Various
An ambitious panorama of post-Civil War American intellect, this nineteenth-century magazine issue weaves scientific discovery, psychological mystery, national expansion, and contemporary fiction into a single rich tapestry.
Tolstoy on Shakespeare: A Critical Essay on Shakespeare
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
A legendary Russian novelist dismantles the world’s most celebrated playwright, stripping away centuries of unquestioned reverence to demand what Shakespeare actually contributes to human morality and true art.
Spare Hours
John Brown
A quiet observation of human nature and animal affection yields a rich tapestry of 19th-century life, medical sacrifice, and literary reflection.
All Things Considered
G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
Life is an absurdly dignified affair, and the ordinary world is far richer, wilder, and more poetic than the solemn experts ever manage to realize.
Modern women and what is said of them
E. Lynn (Elizabeth Lynn) Linton
The Victorian marriage market demands physical allure over character, trapping young women in a cycle of ostentation, superficiality, and social pretense.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV
Various
A mid-nineteenth-century British miscellany brings together rigorous philosophy, gothic romance, oriental travel tales, and fierce political commentary under a single cover.
Manifesto of the Communist Party
Karl Marx
A fierce polemical call to action, this historical manifesto frames human civilization as an ongoing battle between opposing social classes, predicting the inevitable downfall of modern capitalism.
The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893: An Illustrated Monthly
Various
Behind the polished facade of late-Victorian society, human ambition and dark impulses collision in surprising ways, revealing how thin the line is between respectable charm and hidden chaos.