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34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 206 of 714.
The Light That Failed
Rudyard Kipling
A searing portrait of ambition, obsession, and the fragility of sight, this narrative captures the descent of a man who loses everything he values just as he reaches the pinnacle of his professional success.
The Old Franciscan Missions Of California
George Wharton James
The story of the California missions is a perennial, evolving narrative, captured here as a record of a vanishing architectural and spiritual legacy. This work preserves the history and character of a unique frontier era through the lens of those who lived it.
The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
A poet finds the infinite in the everyday, turning a walk through the hills or a glance at a passing stranger into a meditation on memory, loss, and the enduring power of the natural world.
The Purcell Papers
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Beneath the surface of polite Irish society lies a landscape haunted by ancestral debts, spectral visitors, and the unshakable weight of moral consequence.
The Schoolmaster and Other Stories
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
A master of the short form, this collection captures the quiet desperation, absurd comedy, and fleeting human connections of late nineteenth-century Russian life with unmatched clarity.
Thomas Jefferson, a Character Sketch
Edward Sylvester Ellis
A towering figure of the American founding, Thomas Jefferson emerges as a complex blend of aristocrat and democrat whose intellectual legacy continues to shape the nation’s political spirit.
To Be Read at Dusk
Charles Dickens
When the sun sets over the Great St. Bernard Pass, five weary couriers gather to trade stories of the inexplicable, proving that the most unsettling mysteries are often those that leave no physical trace.
Where Half The World Is Waking Up: The Old and the New in Japan, China, the Philippines, and India, Reported With Especial Reference to American Conditions
Clarence Hamilton Poe
An intrepid observer surveys the sweeping social and political transformations across Asia at the dawn of the twentieth century, seeking lessons for an American public navigating its own industrial and democratic coming-of-age.
An American Four-in-Hand in Britain
Andrew Carnegie
A traveling party of Americans explores Britain from the saddle of a private coach, finding beauty in the landscape and sharp contrasts between the old-world traditions they encounter and the democratic ideals they carry from home.
Facing the Flag
Jules Verne
A brilliant but unstable inventor is abducted by a ruthless pirate, setting the stage for a desperate struggle over a weapon of catastrophic, world-altering potential.
The Lost Wagon
Jim Kjelgaard
HOOK A Missouri farmer leads his family into the vast, untamed West, seeking freedom from debt and the promise of land. They face a solitary, perilous journey toward Oregon as their only path to a better life.
The Postage Stamp in War
Frederick John Melville
The history of a conflict can be written in ink and blood, but it is also recorded in the humble, perforated slips of paper that cross the front lines of the world.
The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D
Jonathan Swift
This collection assembles the political reflections and historical observations of a master satirist, offering a window into the intense party rivalries and complex diplomacy that defined the twilight of the Stuart era.
The Sunshade, the Glove, the Muff
Octave Uzanne
These three common accessories—the parasol, the glove, and the muff—are transformed here into the central characters of a charming, digressive study of feminine fashion and historical vanity.
The Younger American Poets
Jessie Belle Rittenhouse
The landscape of early twentieth-century American verse is a vibrant, shifting territory, captured here through the close examination of the prominent voices defining its era.
Under the Southern Cross: Or Travels in Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, Samoa, and Other Pacific Islands
Maturin M. (Maturin Murray) Ballou
The voyage is a nineteenth-century travelogue that captures the vast, rapidly changing colonial landscapes of Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. It serves as an observant, firsthand guide for the armchair traveler.
Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. 1, No. 1: January, 1897
Various
A vivid collection of avian portraits, this inaugural publication pairs striking color photography with earnest, accessible natural history to cultivate a deeper sympathy between children and their winged brethren.
Five Tales
John Galsworthy
HOOK These five stories examine the quiet, often hidden tensions of English life, where honor, fleeting romance, and the inexorable weight of aging collide within the rigid structures of the Edwardian era.
Game and Playe of the Chesse: A Verbatim Reprint of the First Edition, 1474
Jacobus, de Cessolis, active 1288-1322
A medieval game serves as a mirror for the social order, transforming the movement of wooden pieces into a blueprint for a virtuous and well-governed society.
How to Enjoy Paris in 1842: Intended to Serve as a Companion and Monitor, Containing
Francis Hervé
A veteran traveler offers a practical, firsthand account of mid-19th-century Paris, blending essential logistical advice with historical reflection. This guide serves as a candid monitor for the English visitor navigating the French metropolis.
In the wake of the buccaneers
A. Hyatt (Alpheus Hyatt) Verrill
The Caribbean Sea remains a place of enduring romance, where the sapphire waters still whisper the stories of the fierce sea-rovers who once haunted its shores and terrorized the Spanish Main.
Italian Alps: Sketches in the Mountains of Ticino, Lombardy, the Trentino, and Venetia
Douglas William Freshfield
This is a meticulous, authoritative guide to the hidden, high-altitude corners of the Italian Alps, written by an indefatigable explorer who finds beauty in both the rugged granite heights and the verdant valleys below.
Miscellaneous Essays
Thomas De Quincey
This collection of essays offers an intimate, idiosyncratic tour through history, literature, and the curious corners of the human psyche. It is an invitation to view the familiar with fresh, often unsettling, clarity.
The Arts and Crafts of Older Spain, Volume 1 (of 3)
Leonard Williams
The enduring beauty of Spain’s historical artifacts survives in the meticulous detail of their craft, revealing a culture where gold, iron, and steel were pressed into service for both salvation and war. This volume serves as an exhaustive, scholarly survey of the decorative and martial arts of a nation long…
The English Church in the Middle Ages
William Hunt
This account of the English Church traces the centuries-long struggle between ecclesiastical authority, the papacy, and the growing power of the English state. It follows the development of the Church as a national institution from the early Middle Ages through the rise of reformist pressures.
The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
These primary documents offer an unvarnished look at the grueling daily machinery of the American Civil War, as managed by the man tasked with holding a fracturing nation together.
The Story of Versailles
Francis Loring Payne
A monument to absolute power and the eventual theater of its undoing, this chronicle traces the transformation of a quiet hunting lodge into the gilded epicenter of the French monarchy.
The Transvaal from Within: A Private Record of Public Affairs
Percy Fitzpatrick
This urgent, primary-source chronicle strips away the veneer of late-Victorian colonial politics to expose the simmering tensions, systemic corruption, and catastrophic miscalculations that triggered the collapse of peace in the South African Republic.
Theoretical Ethics
M. (Milton) Valentine
An examination of the moral life, this inquiry bridges the gap between human psychology and divine purpose. It argues that conscience is an essential, if fallible, compass for navigating a world of objective moral reality.
Through the Brazilian Wilderness
Theodore Roosevelt
A former president trades the corridors of power for the perilous, unmapped waters of the Amazon. This chronicle of discovery and survival captures the raw intersection of Victorian ambition and the untamed South American wilderness.
Trips to the Moon
of Samosata Lucian
The stars are not a place for serious contemplation but a canvas for the most audacious and imaginative lies ever committed to the page. By turns satirical and surreal, these ancient accounts invent the very genre of the fantastic voyage.
Motion pictures, 1973
Library of Congress. Copyright Office
This volume serves as a formal, comprehensive ledger of the intellectual property registered with the United States government during the first half of 1973. It provides a precise, unvarnished window into the cinematic and educational media output of a pivotal cultural era.
As You Like It
William Shakespeare
Two cousins seek refuge in a wild forest, trading the treacherous politics of a tyrant’s court for the unpredictable, transformative lessons of an ancient woodland.
Atrocious Judges
Campbell, John Campbell, Baron
History is rarely as clean as the statues in the town square suggest. This collection of judicial biographies strips away the veneer of legal majesty to reveal the corruption and cowardice lurking behind the bench.
Complete Project Gutenberg William Dean Howells Works
William Dean Howells
This expansive collection gathers the essential prose, travelogues, and social critiques of a definitive voice in American realism. It serves as a comprehensive gateway to an author who chronicled the quiet, moral complexities of nineteenth-century life.
Garden and Forest Weekly, Volume 1 No. 1, February 29, 1888
Various
This inaugural issue serves as a foundational manifesto for the American conservation movement, blending the aesthetic joys of private gardening with a rigorous, scientific commitment to the preservation of the nation’s forests.
Martin Guerre: Celebrated Crimes
Alexandre Dumas
A man returns from war to his village, but his wife and family are soon forced to confront a terrifying possibility: the person standing in their home is not the husband who left years before.
My Life
Richard Wagner
An artist’s life is often a storm of creative obsession, financial volatility, and the constant friction between personal genius and a world that rarely understands it.
Stories Of Ohio
William Dean Howells
This volume serves as an evocative, episodic chronicle of a region transitioning from primeval wilderness to a bedrock of the American identity. It offers a measured, reflective look at the human cost and triumph defining the settlement of the Ohio Valley.
The Boss, and How He Came to Rule New York
Alfred Henry Lewis
The corrupt machinery of a city’s soul is bared in this memoir of a man who climbed from the gutter to the absolute, iron-fisted rule of Tammany Hall. It is a cold-eyed look at the intersection of power, greed, and the inevitable decay of those who hold the reins.
The Hermitage, Home of Old Hickory
Stanley F. Horn
This account traces the life of a historic Tennessee plantation, detailing the domestic existence of its most famous resident and the eventual preservation of the estate as a national treasure.
The Lost and Hostile Gospels: An Essay on the Toledoth Jeschu, and the Petrine and Pauline Gospels of the First Three Centuries of Which Fragments Remain
S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
A comprehensive exploration of early Christian apocryphal gospels, shedding light on their origins, content, and significance.
The Return
Walter De la Mare
A man’s identity is violently usurped after a chance encounter in a graveyard, leaving him to navigate a world that no longer recognizes him as himself.
The teaching of art related to the home
Florence Fallgatter
This instructional bulletin serves as a practical guide for integrating aesthetic principles into vocational home economics, demonstrating that beauty is a functional necessity for every home, regardless of income. By prioritizing judgment over mere technical skill, it empowers students to transform their immediate…
Violin Mastery: Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers
Frederick Herman Martens
True mastery of the violin is a journey of the mind as much as the fingers, requiring both technical discipline and the courage to find a personal voice.
Blue Bonnet in Boston
Caroline Elliott Hoogs Jacobs
This story follows a spirited, impulsive young woman as she transitions from the wide-open spaces of a Texas ranch to the structured, intellectual environment of a Boston boarding school, where she learns to navigate the delicate boundaries between youthful independence and the requirements of communal life.
Cardinal de Richelieu
Eleanor C. (Eleanor Catherine) Price
The life of Cardinal de Richelieu is a complex study of absolute power, illustrating how one man’s iron will transformed France into the leading force of seventeenth-century Europe.
Famous Indian Chiefs: Their Battles, Treaties, Sieges, and Struggles with the Whites for the Possession of America
Charles H. L. (Charles Haven Ladd) Johnston
This collection of biographies chronicles the lives of prominent Native American leaders, detailing their military strategies, diplomatic efforts, and the inexorable loss of their ancestral lands to European settlers.