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Essays, Letters & Speeches — page 24
1,906 public-domain essays, letters & speeches books, summarised. Page 24 of 40.
On Books and the Housing of Them
W. E. (William Ewart) Gladstone
A lover of books faces a rising tide of print, offering practical wisdom and exact calculations to save home libraries from total chaos.
The Assembly of God. Miscellaneous Writings of C. H. Mackintosh, vol. III
Charles Henry Mackintosh
Faith is not a set of rigid, hand-me-down traditions, but an active, personal communion with a living God.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 61, November, 1862: Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
In a nation torn apart by the Civil War, literature, science, and political commentary converge to chart the intellectual boundaries of a rapidly changing nineteenth-century America.
A Tramp's Sketches
Stephen Graham
Walking alone along the Black Sea and joining thousands of Russian peasant pilgrims on foot toward Jerusalem, a wandering seeker records the songs, storms, and spiritual questionings of the open road.
Great Mysteries and Little Plagues
John Neal
Observed through an unhurried lens, the untamed logic and sharp disclosures of young children reveal a world far more surprising than adult intellect ever constructs.
Letters from France
C. E. W. (Charles Edwin Woodrow) Bean
Men dig under a continuous, distant rumble, carrying the memory of another shore into a vast expanse of wet, churned earth.
Nuts and Nutcrackers
Charles Lever
A collection of satirical essays punctures the pomposity of nineteenth-century social institutions, political schemes, and public pretentions with sharp Irish wit.
Rubble and Roseleaves, and Things of That Kind
Frank Boreham
Ordinary moments hold extraordinary grace when approached with a curious and quiet heart. From a scattered desk of mail to a walk along a stormy coast, small daily encounters reveal the quiet hand of God at work in the human soul.
Stories and Letters from the Trenches
Various
Amid the mud and machinery of 1914, human nature refuses to be entirely erased by the machinery of total war.
Key-Notes of American Liberty: Comprising the most important speeches, proclamations, and acts of Congress, from the foundation of the government to the present time
Various
A nation's identity reveals itself through its foundational texts, charting a turbulent passage from revolutionary ideals to the devastating trial of civil war.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 19, May, 1859: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
Classical physical discipline, contemporary religious debate, and American frontier expansion converge in a mid-nineteenth-century literary compendium.
A Journalist's Note-Book
Frank Frankfort Moore
A veteran newsman surveys the chaotic, often absurd landscape of the late-Victorian press, trading the polish of formal history for the gritty, colorful reality of the editor’s desk.
The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. I., No. 5, January, 1835
Various
HOOK This collection captures the intellectual pulse of the 1830s, blending historical dispatches from the Barbary Coast with the era’s urgent debates on literature, phrenology, and the preservation of American culture.
The Story Tellers' Magazine, Vol. I, No. 1, June 1913
Various
This inaugural issue of a 1913 periodical serves as a manifesto for the power of the oral tradition. It champions the art of storytelling as a vital, transformative tool for education, emotional healing, and human connection.
Address of President Roosevelt at Chautauqua, New York, August 11, 1905
Theodore Roosevelt
This address serves as a primary manifesto for the early twentieth-century American state, balancing the exertion of global power with the necessity of domestic economic reform. It offers a blueprint for an era of federal oversight.
The Book of Months
E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
A meditative journey through a single year, this work blends personal diary entries with lyrical nature writing to explore the intersections of profound grief, sudden joy, and the relentless passage of time.
With the French in France and Salonika
Richard Harding Davis
This account of the Great War offers an intimate, firsthand look at the human cost of conflict, from the shattered streets of Arras to the complex, shifting battlegrounds of the Balkans.
How to Fail in Literature: A Lecture
Andrew Lang
To write well is a formidable challenge, but to write poorly is an art form of its own. This manual for the aspiring literary aspirant serves as a cautionary guide to the precise methods—and social blunders—that guarantee total professional obscurity.
The Irish Penny Journal, Vol. 1 No. 05, August 1, 1840
Various
This collection offers a vibrant, eclectic window into the mid-19th-century Irish landscape, blending travel sketches, social satire, and historical curiosities into a singular weekly record.
Why not? A book for every woman
Horatio Robinson Storer
A physician’s urgent 19th-century appeal to American women, this text serves as a stark, uncompromising warning against the dangers of induced miscarriage. It functions as a foundational document in the history of medical ethics.
State of the Union Addresses
Gerald R. Ford
The President addresses the nation at the end of a tumultuous era, offering a blueprint for economic recovery and a reflection on the enduring strength of the American constitutional experiment.
The Knickerbocker, Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1837
Various
This mid-nineteenth-century literary miscellany captures the restless spirit of a young nation, blending scholarly inquiry, social observation, and romantic storytelling into a single, eclectic volume. It remains a vital artifact for understanding the intellectual currents of the 1830s, offering a window into the…
The Wrack of the Storm
Maurice Maeterlinck
The world is reeling from the sudden eruption of the Great War, and these essays offer a meditation on the moral duty and spiritual resilience required to endure such an unprecedented collapse of civilization.
At the library table
Adrian H. (Adrian Hoffman) Joline
This collection of essays offers a window into the private world of a bibliophile, exploring the quiet joys of collecting, reading, and remembering forgotten authors. It serves as a personal meditation on the enduring value of books in a changing world.
Dead letters
Maurice Baring
HOOK History’s most celebrated figures are reimagined as ordinary people writing home about mundane struggles, domestic gossip, and the exhausting burden of being legendary.
Freedom In Service: Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government
F. J. C. (Fossey John Cobb) Hearnshaw
This series of essays offers a rigorous, unapologetic defense of the state’s authority to demand service from its citizens during a time of existential national crisis.
That Gospel Sermon on the Blessed Hope
Dwight Lyman Moody
This transcript preserves a powerful, urgent sermon centered on the imminent return of Jesus Christ. It serves as an earnest invitation for believers to live in constant, watchful expectation of a transformative future event.
The English Flower Garden: with illustrative notes
Henry Arthur Bright
This meditation on the English garden argues that true horticultural joy comes from intimate acquaintance with individual plants rather than the hollow, fleeting spectacle of mass-market color. It is a quiet call to reclaim the garden as a sanctuary of memory, history, and personal expression.
Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 14 (of 20)
Charles Sumner
The legislative record of the post-Civil War era reveals a nation struggling to define the meaning of freedom. Through formal addresses and parliamentary debates, these pages document the urgent, unfinished business of American reconstruction.
Mere literature, and other essays
Woodrow Wilson
This collection of essays serves as a meditation on the marriage of literary craft and political thought. It argues that true writing, like true statesmanship, requires an imaginative grasp of the human spirit rather than mere technical expertise.
Practicable Socialism: Essays on Social Reform
S. A. (Samuel Augustus) Barnett
In the heart of Victorian London, a dedicated couple observes the crushing weight of urban poverty, arguing that true social reform requires not just systemic policy, but the personal, quiet influence of character.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 63, January, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
This collection captures the mid-Civil War American imagination, blending urgent political commentary with the literary sensibilities of a nation searching for its own identity amidst the smoke of battle.
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863: Devoted to Literature and National Policy
Various
The national crisis of the American Civil War defines this collection, framing the era’s urgent political debates, literary sensibilities, and shifting social landscape. It captures the heavy, anxious pulse of a country struggling to define its future.
The Great Discovery
Norman Maclean
A quiet Scottish parish finds its spiritual foundations shaken by the outbreak of the First World War, prompting a profound re-examination of faith, duty, and the national soul.
Washington and the Riddle of Peace
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
This collection of dispatches captures the raw, immediate struggle to forge a lasting peace in the wake of the First World War, serving as a time capsule of a world teetering between collapse and a new international order.
Ceres' Runaway, and Other Essays
Alice Meynell
A collection of contemplative essays, this work explores the tension between human artifice and the natural world. It offers a refined, observant look at the quirks of language, childhood, and the rhythms of English life.
On Being Human
Woodrow Wilson
To navigate the complexities of a modern, hurried world, one must cultivate a spirit of "genuineness"—a balanced, observant, and serene approach to life that favors broad understanding over narrow fanaticism.
The Little Review, May 1915 (Vol. 2, No. 3)
Various
This artifact of literary modernism captures the frantic, searching spirit of 1915, documenting a world on the brink of profound, violent transformation through the eyes of the era's most restless writers and thinkers.
The Unpopular Review, Number 19: July-December 1918
Various
This collection of essays, cultural critiques, and editorial commentary serves as a spirited, opinionated window into the intellectual anxieties and high-minded ambitions of American thinkers during the final months of the Great War.
The Water of Life, and Other Sermons
Charles Kingsley
These sermons offer a vigorous, muscular theology that finds the presence of a living God not in remote abstractions, but in the grime, sickness, and social duties of nineteenth-century London. They serve as a bridge between the traditional pulpit and the emerging demands of a modern, industrialized society.
Rebel women
Evelyn Sharp
The struggle for political enfranchisement is often depicted as a clash of grand ideologies, but the true pulse of the movement beats in the quiet, persistent defiance of ordinary women. Within these pages, the fight for the vote is revealed not as a distant revolution, but as a deeply personal transformation…
Speeches of the Hon. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi
Jefferson Davis
An urgent and formal defense of political principle, these collected addresses capture a pivotal moment when the American Union teetered on the brink of fracture.
The Critic and the Drama
George Jean Nathan
The critic is the self-appointed chaperone of the arts, an egotist tasked with measuring the distance between a playwright’s ambition and the audience’s capacity for wonder. This work serves as an uncompromising manifesto on the mechanics of theater and the responsibilities of those who stand in judgment of it.
Watson Refuted: Being an Answer to the Apology for the Bible, in a Series of Letters to the Bishop Of Llandaff
Samuel W. (Samuel Ward) Francis
This polemical work serves as a sharp-edged rejoinder to the theological defenses of the late eighteenth century, challenging the established authority of the church through the lens of radical rationalism.
Hell: Warm Words on the Cheerful and Comforting Doctrine of Eternal Damnation
Robert Green Ingersoll
The doctrine of eternal damnation is an affront to human decency, a dark relic of barbarism that must be replaced by the light of science and the practical work of improving life on earth.
In the Track of the Bookworm
Irving Browne
The true book-worm is defined not by the size of his library, but by the depth of his devotion to the hunt and the quiet companionship of his shelves. This collection of essays and ballads offers an intimate look at the peculiar, often obsessive, and deeply rewarding life of the bibliophile.
Little Dinners With the Sphinx, and Other Prose Fancies
Richard Le Gallienne
This collection of lyrical, reflective prose sketches captures the fleeting beauty of romantic idealism, memory, and the bittersweet transition from youth to maturity. These vignettes serve as a meditation on the persistence of dreams in a world that demands practical compromise.
Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc
Various
This collection of 1853 correspondence serves as a vibrant clearinghouse for Victorian intellectual curiosity, where antiquaries, linguists, and historians swap obscure facts to satisfy their restless, scholarly appetites.