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30,104 public-domain books, summarised. Page 103 of 628.
Fairies and Fusiliers
Robert Graves
Youthful daydreams of fairies and ancient legends clash violently with the cold, muddy horrors of the Western Front, forcing a wounded soldier to rebuild his shattered world through verse.
Heartbreak House
Bernard Shaw
In a eccentric English country house on the eve of the Great War, a collection of cultured, romantic, and cynical aristocrats drift through life, blissfully oblivious to their impending doom.
Music and Some Highly Musical People
James M. Trotter
This landmark nineteenth-century volume combines a reflective history of global music with detailed biographies, recording how Black instrumentalists, vocalists, and ensembles built illustrious careers despite systemic prejudice.
Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Now First Published
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Faith, sensory wonder, and deep psychological distress collide in a body of verse that remakes the cadences of traditional English poetry into something altogether new, urgent, and radically alive.
Senescence, the Last Half of Life
G. Stanley (Granville Stanley) Hall
Aging is neither a sudden collapse nor a quiet harbor, but a vast, uncharted continent of human experience that demands its own rigorous psychological and biological understanding.
An introduction to philology
Clement Wood
Language is not a fixed monument but a living tide, reshaped daily by human need, migration, and accidental invention.
Jane Austen and Her Country-house Comedy
W. H. (William Henry) Helm
A rare blend of good-natured satire and quiet observation transforms the domestic world of early nineteenth-century country houses into an enduring canvas of human folly, social ambition, and understated moral truth.
Principles of literary criticism
I. A. (Ivor Armstrong) Richards
A rigorous attempt to rescue literary judgment from vague mysticism, this work grounds art and reading in the concrete mechanics of human psychology, language, and emotional impulse.
Sailing ships
E. Keble (Edward Keble) Chatterton
Human ingenuity takes to the water, tracing how a simple bundle of papyrus evolved over millennia into majestic, multi-masted vessels of oak, iron, and canvas.
Sylvie and Bruno
Lewis Carroll
Two realm-bound visions collide in a feverish, shape-shifting landscape where political palace coups melt into sweet fairy encounters and high-minded Victorian tea-parlor debates.
"Everyman," with other interludes, including eight miracle plays
Unknown
A universal human journey unfolds as a dying man discovers that his wealth, friends, and strength vanish, leaving only his neglected good deeds to stand before his Creator.
Illustrated history of ancient literature, oriental and classical
John D. (John Duncan) Quackenbos
An expansive survey traces human expression across centuries, following the rise and decay of ancient literary traditions from the courts of Asia to the forums of Greece and Rome.
Recollections of the Private Life of Napoleon
Louis Constant Wairy
A servant's eye view strips the global conqueror of his myth, revealing the human engine that drove an empire.
Stories from the Odyssey
Homer
A long-lost king battles monsters, wrathful gods, and treacherous seas to return to an island realm overrun by insolent invaders.
Theresa Raquin
Émile Zola
A suppressed, passionate woman and a brutal, sluggish man murder a sickly husband, only to discover that the dead man's memory poisons their passion into mutual terror and inescapable hatred.
Smithsonian Institution - United States National Museum - Bulletin 240: Contributions From the Museum of History and Technology
Museum of History and Technology (U.S.)
Through eleven detailed monographic studies, this volume reconstructs the practical ingenuity, mathematical rigor, and physical craft that transformed raw materials and physical laws into the foundation of modern technical civilization.
The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5)
Theodor Mommsen
From a handful of agrarian clans tilling the banks of the Tiber to the master of the Mediterranean world, one city reshapes human history through administrative genius, ruthless military ambition, and eventual internal decay.
The Philosophy of Mystery
Walter Cooper Dendy
What appears to be a ghost, a prophetic vision, or a supernatural spell is almost always the natural product of an excited brain, a trick of light, or a body subjected to stress.
Books in chains, and other bibliographical papers
William Blades
Old books carry the physical marks of human hands, from the heavy iron chains that anchored them to cathedral desks to the tiny guide letters written at the margins.
Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America
Edmund Burke
A passionate plea for political pragmatism, this famous parliamentary address argues that holding an empire together requires honoring the inherent spirit of liberty in its people rather than demanding absolute submission through force.
Shinto (the Way of the Gods)
W. G. (William George) Aston
A systematic exploration reveals how an ancient religion grew from primitive nature worship into a complex web of ritual, myth, and local deities before encountering foreign philosophy.
The Vision and Creed of Piers Ploughman, Volume 1
William Langland
A wandering dreamer sleeps on the Malvern Hills and observes a vast field full of folk, uncovering the deep spiritual and moral rot of medieval English society.
This Country of Ours
H. E. (Henrietta Elizabeth) Marshall
A sweeping national epic rendered with childlike wonder and narrative drive, this volume turns centuries of wilderness clearing, political trial, and battle into a tapestry of human ambition.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Cincinnatus" to "Cleruchy": Volume 6, Slice 4
Various
A vast array of human knowledge moves from maritime jurisdiction and geometric lines to political revolutions, ancient philosophies, and the evolving machinery of statecraft.
Geography and Plays
Gertrude Stein
A revolutionary reordering of ordinary language, this collection dissolves traditional narrative into pure cadence, spatial arrangement, and hypnotic domestic observation.
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
In the hush of the royal chamber, a doomed bride spins woven wonder out of human frailty, magical beasts, and endless desire, staving off execution with every sunrise.
The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: from Marathon to Waterloo
Creasy, Edward Shepherd, Sir
From Marathon to Waterloo, pivotal armed clashes have redirected human civilization by halting imperial expansion, preserving regional liberties, or breaking established global powers.
A servant of reality
Phyllis Bottome
A damaged veteran returns home to a changed world, finding that the true fight for his humanity begins far from the battlefield.
Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales
Jonathan Ceredig Davies
A tapestry of communal memory, this volume gathers the vanishing customs, spectral warnings, and living traditions that once anchored daily life across rural Wales.
On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass
Derek J. de Solla (Derek John de Solla) Price
A long-standing assumption holds that simple timekeepers like sundials evolved straight into mechanical clocks. In truth, the true ancestor of mechanical clockwork lies in complex astronomical models built across centuries and continents to simulate the heavens.
The Autobiography of St. Ignatius
Ignatius, of Loyola, Saint
A wounded soldier hangs up his sword at a mountain shrine, exchanges his rich clothes with a beggar, and sets out to conquer his own soul.
New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 1, No. 1: From the Beginning to March, 1915, With Index
Various
Intellectuals and public figures clash fiercely in print as Europe plunges into total war, exposing how national panic shatters shared cultural values.
Remarks
Bill Nye
Blending sharp satire with absurd domestic misadventures, this nineteenth-century collection transforms everyday frustrations—from glue-footed cats to nightmarish federal bureaucracy—into a hilarious parade of American wit.
The coach-horn
Old Guard
To master the coach-horn, one must reject natural talent as a substitute for discipline and embrace the physical precision required to send clear musical calls echoing down the road.
They Shall Not Pass
Frank H. (Frank Herbert) Simonds
A relentless struggle of endurance and spirit unfolds amid the ruins of a shell-ravaged city, where the fate of a nation hinges not on territory but on the unyielding will to hold the line.
A New System
Jacob Bryant
All pagan mythology stems from a single historical truth: ancient religions were corrupted memories of the Great Flood and the deified ancestors who survived it.
Adonais
Percy Bysshe Shelley
A sorrowing poet transforms personal tragedy into a sweeping meditation on art, immortality, and the eternal power of the creative spirit.
An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism: With reference to the duty of American females
Catharine Esther Beecher
A prominent northern educator cautions that sudden, aggressive agitation against Southern slavery endangers both social harmony and the moral integrity of American women.
Exercises in Knitting
Cornelia Mee
A clear, precise manual of nineteenth-century needlework instructions, organizing intricate stitches and specialized garment patterns into structured steps.
Hamlet
William Shakespeare
A grieving prince encounters his father’s ghost, discovering a murder that demands a vengeance he cannot bring himself to swiftly exact.
The Burgess Bird Book for Children
Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo) Burgess
A curious rabbit roams through field, forest, and wetland, interviewing dozens of native birds to discover their colors, diets, nesting quirks, and annual migrations.
The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals. Vol. 2
Byron, George Gordon Byron, Baron
A legendary poet navigates sudden celebrity, high-society feuds, and political outrage while revealing a sharp, restless mind in his private writings.
A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2: To the Close of the 19th Century
George Saintsbury
A lone reader sits before a vast library of nineteenth-century French novels, guided by a scholar who has read every page and refuses to pretend that bad books are good.
The Chinese Classics: with a translation, critical and exegetical notes, prolegomena and copious indexes: (Shih ching. English)
James Legge
To recover the moral foundations of a fractured civilization, an ancient tradition turns to self-cultivation, filial piety, and the quiet authority of rulers who lead not by force, but by personal virtue.
The Golden Road
L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery
Youth is an ephemeral country, but its wild wind, orchard light, and fierce loyalties remain forever etched in the minds of those who walked its paths.
The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915
Various
Confronted by the violent disruptions of World War I and the pressures of assimilation, young Jewish intellectuals in 1915 forge a revitalized, secular identity through academic study and communal obligation.
Alarms and Discursions
G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
A grey, goggle-eyed gargoyle lying forgotten in cathedral grass becomes the doorway to a spirited defense of everyday wonder, sanity, and human scale.
Disputation of Doctor Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences
Martin Luther
A series of sharply argued propositions challenges the sale of spiritual pardons, demanding that genuine repentance replace commercial shortcuts in Christian life.