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34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 115 of 714.
Etidorhpa
John Uri Lloyd
A man discovers the hidden secrets of the universe through a forced, perilous descent into the hollow interior of the Earth. This singular narrative blends scientific curiosity with the heavy atmosphere of a nineteenth-century occult initiation.
Haunted London
Walter Thornbury
London is not a city of ghosts, but a city of memories, where every street corner and crumbling stone holds the weight of centuries. It is a vast, living tapestry of biographical stories and ancient traditions.
Modern Essays
Unknown
The essayist acts as both a scout and a companion, navigating the vast, often overlooked territories of literature and human experience to find the quiet truths hidden in plain sight.
Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend
Browne, Thomas, Sir
An elegant, inquisitive mind wanders through the mysteries of faith, the melancholy of mortality, and the curious physical remnants of those long buried. These pieces capture the voice of a man uniquely at home in both science and prayer.
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 04
Robert Louis Stevenson
These tales explore the fine, fragile line between a gentleman’s honor and a scoundrel’s desperation. They capture the thrill of midnight encounters where life, death, and fortune are staked on a single, sudden whim.
Contemporary American Literature: Bibliographies and Study Outlines
John Matthews Manly
This reference guide organizes the burgeoning landscape of early twentieth-century American writing into a structured, accessible map for the earnest student. It serves as a vital snapshot of a literary culture in the midst of rapid transformation.
The art of music, Vol. 03 (of 14)
Unknown
This volume functions as a comprehensive survey of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century musical evolution, tracing the shift from romanticism to the diverse, nationalistic, and experimental movements that defined the modern era. It examines how composers across Europe and Russia navigated the legacy of…
The Elements of Botany, For Beginners and For Schools
Asa Gray
A meticulous guide to the architecture of the natural world, this volume serves as both a primer for the curious beginner and a structural manual for the serious student of botany. It invites readers to look past the surface of a flower to uncover the elegant, logical design that governs all plant life.
The facts about rejuvenation
Morris Fishbein
The quest for eternal youth is a perennial human folly, and this investigation serves as a sharp, clinical correction to the snake-oil promises that frequently exploit the aging and the desperate.
The Forerunners
Romain Rolland
These essays serve as a desperate, defiant archive of independent thought during the First World War. They preserve the voices of the few who refused to succumb to the prevailing winds of nationalistic hatred.
The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country
W. F. (William Forsell) Kirby
A collection of ancient myths and spirited folk-tales, these pages offer a rare window into a landscape of giants, sorcerers, and the elemental forces of the Baltic spirit.
A Child's Garden of Verses
Robert Louis Stevenson
A child’s imagination is a vast, untamed country where a meadow becomes a stormy sea and a nursery floor turns into a kingdom of blocks. This collection of verses preserves that fleeting, marvelous perspective with startling clarity.
Mabini's Decalogue for Filipinos
Apolinario Mabini
To love one's country is to embrace a divine, intellectual, and moral imperative. This foundational text serves as a guiding star for those who seek to balance individual virtue with the collective destiny of a struggling nation.
The Earthly Paradise: A Poem (Part II)
William Morris
The golden promise of eternal youth and love shimmers against the inevitable, quiet encroachment of mortality. These tales explore the fragile boundary between the dreams we chase and the reality of our own fading lives.
The Journal of a Disappointed Man
W. N. P. Barbellion
This record of a restless, brilliant, and dying mind captures the fierce tension between a desperate hunger for life and the slow, inexorable decay of the body.
The Memoirs of François René Vicomte de Chateaubriand sometime Ambassador to England. Volume 6 (of 6): Mémoires d'outre-tombe volume 6
Chateaubriand, François-René, vicomte de
A man of letters navigates the twilight of the Bourbon monarchy, offering a final, panoramic meditation on the transience of power, the weight of exile, and the erosion of his own historical era.
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803
Unknown
This collection of primary accounts offers an unfiltered glimpse into the Spanish colonial project in the Pacific. It serves as a foundational record of the mid-sixteenth-century encounter between European ambition and the diverse cultures of the Philippine archipelago.
The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy
Boethius
Stripped of his high office and facing execution, a fallen statesman encounters a divine figure who guides his mind from the depths of despair to the clarity of eternal truth.
The Trembling of the Veil
W. B. (William Butler) Yeats
The search for artistic and spiritual truth requires a descent into one’s own contradictions. A life lived in pursuit of the "Unity of Being" is an experiment that demands both analysis and record.
The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea. Vol. I
Gomes Eannes de Zurara
A fifteenth-century chronicler documents the opening of the West African coast, detailing the maritime expeditions that shifted the horizon of the medieval world and the human cost of these inaugural encounters.
History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, Vol. 1: Compiled from the Original Records
Francis Duncan
This rigorous chronicle documents the evolution of the British Royal Artillery, charting its journey from ad-hoc medieval trains to a sophisticated, global military institution by 1815. It functions as both a formal administrative history and a tribute to the professional identity of the men who manned the guns.
The Amores
Ovid
The god of love demands a change of meter, pulling the poet away from epic warfare and into a life of romantic obsession, deception, and elegy.
The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell
Dante Alighieri
A soul wanders into the dark woods of midlife, only to find the path forward blocked by beasts and the path back barred by shadow. He must descend through the hollow earth to find his way home.
The Folk-lore of Plants
T. F. (Thomas Firminger) Thiselton-Dyer
Plants hold a silent, symbolic power over the human imagination, acting as vessels for our deepest fears, fondest hopes, and oldest memories. Through the lens of ancestral belief, the natural world becomes a living map of human experience.
The Haunted Bookshop
Christopher Morley
A quirky Brooklyn bookseller finds his quiet, shelf-lined world turned upside down when a young woman and a dangerous web of international espionage enter his shop.
Booker T. Washington, Builder of a Civilization
Emmett J. (Emmett Jay) Scott
A portrait of a singular life, this account captures the maturity of a leader who transformed a modest school into a global beacon of self-reliance and industrial education.
Candida
Bernard Shaw
A charismatic clergyman’s orderly world is upended when a young, destitute poet challenges him for his wife’s affection, forcing a confrontation between domestic comfort and the unsettling truth of love.
National Epics
Kate Milner Rabb
This volume serves as a curated gateway to the world’s most enduring narrative poems, distilling monumental works into accessible summaries and essential scenes for the reader who lacks the time to master every original text.
Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies
Samuel Johnson
This scholarly collection offers a rigorous, often bracing, look at the moral and structural mechanics of Shakespeare’s most significant tragedies. It serves as a masterclass in eighteenth-century literary criticism, balancing deep personal engagement with the cold precision of an analytical mind.
The History of Painting in Italy, Vol. 1 (of 6): From the Period of the Revival of the Fine Arts to the End of the Eighteenth Century
Luigi Lanzi
A definitive chronicle of Italian artistic evolution, this expansive work maps the rise, refinement, and eventual transformation of the country's most significant regional painting schools from the early Renaissance through the eighteenth century.
The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari: Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2)
James S. (James Seguin) De Benneville
A haunting cycle of betrayal and retribution unfurls in the shadows of Edo, where the fragile threads of honor are severed by greed and the relentless weight of the past. This narrative reconstructs the classic Japanese tragedy of O'Iwa, weaving together historical atmosphere and the spectral consequences of a…
Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit
Joel Chandler Harris
A clever trickster exploits the vanity and greed of his neighbors in a series of folk tales told by an elderly storyteller to a young boy.
American Institutions and Their Influence
Alexis de Tocqueville
American political life is a vast laboratory of self-governance, where the habits of a free people shape the machinery of law and the survival of the republic.
The autobiography of Arthur Young
Arthur Young
A life of relentless intellectual ambition and agricultural reform dissolves into haunting, solitary religious devotion, capturing the profound transformation of a man who traveled the world only to be undone by his own inner shadows.
The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh Eating
Howard Williams
Human beings are not physiologically designed to be carnivores, and the consumption of flesh is a moral and physical error. This sweeping historical survey argues that a compassionate, plant-based diet is the original and natural path for humanity.
The history of the damnable life and deserved death of Doctor John Faustus, 1592, together with The second report of Faustus, containing his appearances and the deeds of Wagner, 1594
Unknown
A scholar trades his soul for twenty-four years of limitless power, only to discover that the devil’s bargain offers a hollow feast of transient tricks and ultimate ruin.
The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844: Volume 23, Number 4
Various
A collection of mid-nineteenth-century literary miscellany, this magazine preserves the Victorian appetite for travelogues, historical narratives, social commentary, and sentimental verse in a single, eclectic volume.
The Orchard Secret: Arden Blake Mystery Series #1
Cleo F. Garis
An energetic freshman girl discovers that college life is not just about books and hazing, but also about unraveling dangerous mysteries hidden in the shadows of an old estate.
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 34 of 55, 1519-1522
Antonio Pigafetta
This volume archives the intersection of global exploration and early colonial administration, tracing the transition from the heroic age of circumnavigation to the gritty, bureaucratic reality of governing a distant archipelago. It offers a rare, multi-layered perspective on the sixteenth-century Philippine encounter.
The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland (Vol 1 of 2): With Tunes, Singing-Rhymes and Methods of Playing etc
Alice Bertha Gomme
This scholarly yet spirited collection captures the fleeting echoes of childhood, preserving the rhyming songs and intricate movements of games played on village greens and schoolyards across the British Isles.
How to read and correct proof
Lloyd E. (Lloyd Edwin) Smith
To catch the minute errors that evade the casual reader, one must cultivate a patient, trained mind and a relentless eye for detail. This guide reveals how the professional corrector ensures that what reaches the page is as accurate as humanly possible.
John Chambers, Servant of Christ and Master of Hearts, and His Ministry in Philadelphia
William Elliot Griffis
A commanding, magnetic preacher who defined nineteenth-century Philadelphia, John Chambers remains a testament to the power of personal conviction and the enduring influence of a dedicated life on an entire community.
Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe: Compiled From Her Letters and Journals by Her Son Charles Edward Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Seeking solace in a life defined by faith and public service, a writer finds her voice in the turbulent nineteenth century. This biography, woven from private correspondence and personal journals, reveals the woman behind a nation’s conscience.
Recollections of My Childhood and Youth
Georg Brandes
A brilliant, restless young intellectual navigates the rigid social and literary hierarchies of mid-19th-century Denmark, ultimately breaking free to engage with the wider currents of European thought.
The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers
Steele, Richard, Sir
The Spectator is a mirror held up to the manners, whims, and quiet virtues of early eighteenth-century England. It finds the extraordinary in the ordinary, turning a simple country squire into an enduring icon of English literature.
An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon in the East Indies: Together with an Account of the Detaining in Captivity the Author and Divers other Englishmen Now Living There, and of the Author's Miraculous Escape
Robert Knox
A shipwrecked sailor finds himself trapped for twenty years in an island kingdom, where he must navigate royal caprice, social intrigue, and the constant, dangerous pull of a longing for home.
Chinese pottery and porcelain
R. L. (Robert Lockhart) Hobson
The art of Chinese porcelain represents a centuries-long refinement of clay and fire, revealing the soul of a civilization through its exquisite, enduring vessels.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Edwardes, Sir Herbert Benjamin" to "Ehrenbreitstein": Volume 9, Slice 1
Various
This volume serves as a sprawling, meticulously detailed repository of late-Victorian knowledge, capturing the world as it was understood at the dawn of the twentieth century. It functions not as a narrative, but as an expansive map of human inquiry, encompassing everything from the theological disputes of American…