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34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 243 of 714.
Our Stage and Its Critics: By "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
Edward Fordham Spence
A sharp critic looks at the British theater and sees a magnificent cultural engine routinely sabotaged by commercial greed and intellectual laziness. Behind the glamour of the footlights, the stage remains burdened by timid managers, vanity-driven staging, and an audience that prefers easy distraction to hard thought.
Palmer's Journal of Travels Over the Rocky Mountains, 1845-1846
Joel Palmer
An unvarnished day-by-day record of the long overland trek to Oregon captures the grinding reality, unexpected beauty, and practical logistics of mid-nineteenth-century American westward expansion.
Pictures of the old French court
Mrs. (Catherine Mary Charlton) Bearne
Intrigue, devotion, and sudden violence shape the lives of three royal women who navigate the treacherous court of Valois France.
Primitive Christian Worship
James Endell Tyler
An earnest Victorian clergyman turns a meticulous eye toward early church history, seeking to discover whether the veneration of saints and the Virgin Mary belonged to the original faith or crept in through later corruptions.
Response in the Living and Non-Living
Jagadis Chandra Bose
Mechanical strain, thermal shifts, and chemical poisons produce the same electrical disturbances in tin, celery, and animal muscle. This classic treatise demonstrates that the fundamental characteristics of responsiveness belong to matter itself, unifying the living and non-living worlds.
Rosmersholm
Henrik Ibsen
A former clergyman and a freethinking woman attempt to build a noble life together on the ashes of his wife's suicide, only to be dragged down by political malice and inescapable guilt.
Science and the Criminal
C. Ainsworth (Charles Ainsworth) Mitchell
The relentless duel between criminal cunning and scientific investigation finds its chronicler in a guide to early forensic tools, miscarriages of justice, and courtroom battles.
Talks on Manures: A Series of Familiar and Practical Talks Between the Author and the Deacon, the Doctor, and Other Neighbors, on the Whole Subject
Joseph Harris
Through lively, fire-side debate with his neighbors, an American farmer unpacks the rigorous chemistry, economic logic, and practical mechanics of feeding the soil to maximize crop yields.
Tara: A Mahratta Tale
Meadows Taylor
A young Brahmin widow becomes a devoted temple priestess in seventeen-century India, only to be swept into a perilous clash between a rising Maratha chieftain and the Bijapur Kingdom. <Image alt="Book cover of Tara: A Mahratta Tale" caption="Tara: A Mahratta Tale" src="imageagenttag12407152818080985314"/
The Altar of the Dead
Henry James
When an aging bachelor builds a private temple of candlelight to honor his departed loved ones, he accidentally creates a sacred haven for another grieving soul—only to discover that their shared sanctuary rests on a devastating shared past.
The Burial of the Guns
Thomas Nelson Page
Set against the lingering shadows of the American Civil War, six evocative tales explore the quiet tragedy of loss, the stubborn grip of memory, and the enduring dignity of the human spirit.
The Complete Club Book for Women: Including Subjects, Material and References for Study Programs
Caroline French Benton
Organizing self-directed educational and civic groups requires translating ambitious intellectual curiosities into concrete, actionable schedules.
The Dark Star
Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
A dark star's ancient curse sends a young American illustrator into a shadowy web of European espionage on the eve of world war.
The Forgotten Planet
Murray Leinster
Under an unbroken blanket of suffocating gray clouds, a forgotten world breeds giant nightmares, forcing remnants of humanity to scurry through mushroom forests while gigantic insects rule the earth.
The Formation of Christendom, Volume II
T. W. (Thomas William) Allies
Ancient Rome stood at the height of its material power and intellectual sophistication, yet it remained morally hollow, bound to a chaotic pantheon of false gods and fractured philosophy.
The Lands of the Saracen: Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain
Bayard Taylor
An intrepid nineteenth-century American traveler traces the fading footprints and enduring splendor of Islamic culture across the Mediterranean world.
The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Volume 2
Maria Edgeworth
Sharp observations, quick intellect, and deep devotion to family animate this intimate, wide-ranging record of a famous nineteenth-century Irish novelist's later years.
The Medieval Latin Hymn
Ruth Ellis Messenger
An examination of medieval Latin hymns reveals how religious lyrics functioned as living expressions of communal faith, cultural shift, and daily worship across a thousand years of European history.
The queen's necklace
Alexandre Dumas
A shadowed room in 1784, a wizard-charlatan predicting the gallows, and a queen who wants a million-franc diamond necklace she cannot afford: these are the embers from which a kingdom catches fire.
The Sea-Kings of Crete
James Baikie
Before classical Greece flourished, a brilliant Bronze Age society ruled the Aegean, vanished under foreign invasions, and left its memories trapped inside legendary myths.
The Steam Engine Familiarly Explained and Illustrated: With an historical sketch of its invention and progressive improvement
Dionysius Lardner
An accessible Victorian guide illuminates the physics of steam power, tracing its journey from early experimental boilers to high-speed locomotives and transatlantic shipping lines.
The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph
Henry M. (Henry Martyn) Field
A twelve-year struggle of snapping cables, political fights, and mid-ocean storms ends when a steamship hooks a lost line from a two-mile-deep seabed to wire two continents together.
The Woman Who Toils: Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls
Van Vorst, John, Mrs.
Under disguises and behind heavy factory doors, two upper-class sisters step directly onto the assembly lines of Gilded Age America to witness the human price of industrial progress.
The yellow book, an illustrated quarterly. Vol. 1, April 1894
Unknown
A startling yellow cover unleashes a parade of modern anxieties, artifice, and artistic ambition, capturing a late-Victorian culture caught between rigid propriety and decadent rebellion. This volume is a literary milestone that defined its decade.
Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders
Victor Appleton
Deep in the Honduran jungle, an ancient city lies buried under centuries of soil, guarding a multi-ton idol of solid gold. Two competing scientific expeditions race through treacherous wilderness to unearth it first.
Voltaire
John Morley
An intellectual fury meets an oppressive age, forging modern freedom through relentless speech, sharp wit, and unyielding practical action.
What is Coming? A Forecast of Things after the War
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
A mind trained in the habits of scientific analysis looks past the immediate chaos of global conflict to discern the structural shifts rebuilding tomorrow's society.
Windows: A Book About Stained & Painted Glass
Lewis F. (Lewis Foreman) Day
Light reveals every line of art, but only when viewed from within does glass spring to life.
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 6, part 2: Andrew Johnson
Unknown
A tailored orphan's rise from poverty to the presidency culminates in a bitter, high-stakes constitutional war over the limits of executive power during Reconstruction.
A Dissertation upon Roast Pig
Charles Lamb
A playful origin myth gives way to an ecstatic, tongue-in-cheek ode on the unmatched culinary perfection of young roasted swine.
A History of England from Early Times: A Linked Index to the Project Gutenberg Editions
T. (Tobias) Smollett
A continuous march across centuries reveals how an island kingdom transforms from scattered ancient tribes into an expansive global empire through ceaseless political turmoil, shifting crowns, and systemic conflicts.
A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2
Otto von Kotzebue
A seasoned Russian naval officer chronicles a mid-1820s expedition, blending meticulous geographical observation with a candid, often sharp-edged assessment of the colonial encounters and indigenous cultures he observes during his circumnavigation.
Acres of Diamonds
Russell H. Conwell
Real wealth and greatness are not hidden in distant lands or official titles; they lie waiting in your own backyard, accessible to anyone willing to see and serve local human needs.
Arabia: The Cradle of Islam: Studies in the Geography, People and Politics of the Peninsula, with an Account of Islam and Mission-Work
Samuel Marinus Zwemer
Across unforgiving sands and contested coasts, a vast peninsula remains a mystery to the Western world, guarding its ancient trade, fierce tribal legacies, and the core of Islam.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844
Various
A single issue of a Victorian literary periodical opens a window onto mid-nineteenth-century British politics, romantic fiction, political philosophy, and historical biography. Across its pages, sharp political commentary sits beside eerie tales, collegiate reminiscences, and deep engagements with European thought.
Careers of Danger and Daring
Cleveland Moffett
A life spent suspended over a void, working deep underwater, or standing before a caged lion requires a steady pulse and a peculiar, learned discipline.
Cleek, the Master Detective
Thomas W. Hanshew
A master thief abandons his shadowy past for love, turning his chameleon-like talent for disguise and deduction into a force for justice alongside Scotland Yard.
"Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went
Louis Keene
A young Canadian artist drops his paintbrushes in the summer of 1914, steps into uniform, and finds himself tossed into the muddy, shell-shattered chaos of the Western Front.
Exotics and Retrospectives
Lafcadio Hearn
An encounter with a world where mountain dust, insect song, and ghostly memories converge, this collection bridges delicate Japanese observation and the vast, unsettling depths of evolutionary psychology.
Fairy Tales from Spain
José Muñoz Escámez
A clever young man outsmarts a shape-shifting horse, a cabin boy inherits a diamond kingdom, and a Spanish sailor stumbles onto an island of dwarfs. Across nineteen vibrant tales, old Europe meets the far corners of the earth in a world of high stakes and quick wits.
Glaucus
Charles Kingsley
Exploring the edge where land meets sea uncovers a hidden universe of astonishing color, intricate adaptation, and quiet beauty available to anyone willing to stop, look, and wonder.
Helen of Troy, and Other Poems
Sara Teasdale
Women of legend and modern observers alike confront the quiet, overwhelming weight of love, discovering that devotion often exacts a devastating price.
History of Central America, Volume 1, 1501-1530: The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, Volume 6
Hubert Howe Bancroft
A handful of Spanish adventurers, driven by gold and glory, march across the Isthmus of Darien and the forests of Central America, upending native civilizations and battling each other for imperial spoils.
Huntingtower
John Buchan
When a newly retired Scottish grocer sets out on a quiet walking tour, he stumbles into a web of international intrigue, a besieged seaside mansion, and a captive Russian princess.
Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland
G. F. (George Forrest) Browne
Beneath the sunlit pastures and limestone hills of France and Switzerland lie quiet, frozen caverns where massive ice-structures endure through summer heat.
King Arthur in history and legend
William Lewis Jones
Before he became the polished centerpiece of Victorian chivalry or medieval romance, the king of shadow and steel was merely a shadowy commander in the dark corners of British history.
Life's Basis and Life's Ideal: The Fundamentals of a New Philosophy of Life
Rudolf Eucken
Humanity cannot thrive on material progress alone; true living requires actively ascending above nature to construct an independent, inner spiritual reality.
Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, &c, Volume 2
Izaak Walton
A quiet devotion to study and duty forms the bedrock of a life spent serving the English Church.