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34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 265 of 714.

George Crabbe: Poems, Volume 2 (of 3)
George Crabbe
A meticulous chronicler of the human heart, this poet strips away the pastoral veneer of English life to reveal the grit, longing, and moral complexity hidden behind quiet village doors and country estates.

He Who Gets Slapped: A Play in Four Acts
Leonid Andreyev
A man retreats from the hollow life of the intellectual elite to join a traveling circus, hoping to find truth in the stinging sting of a clown’s slap. He soon discovers that the mask of a fool is the only honest way to love a world that prefers the comfort of illusions.

History of Friedrich II of Prussia
Thomas Carlyle
This sprawling, eccentric chronicle traces the rise of the Prussian state from its murky, prehistoric beginnings to the emergence of its most formidable architect, Friedrich II. It is a dense, idiosyncratic work of history that blends meticulous scholarship with the author's deeply moralizing, often cranky, and…

History of Friedrich II of Prussia
Thomas Carlyle
The life of a legendary monarch unfolds here, tracing the harsh, transformative crucible of his youth and the iron-willed foundations of his eventual reign. This expansive history examines the collision of private anguish and public duty, detailing the volatile, often brutal, relationship between a stern father and…

Hyde Park from Domesday-book to Date
John Ashton
A chronicle of London’s most famous greenspace, tracing its transformation from a feudal manor to a stage for public spectacle and political unrest.

In the Footprints of Charles Lamb
Benjamin Ellis Martin
The gentle, melancholic figure of Charles Lamb emerges from these pages not as a static historical relic, but as a man defined by his deep attachments to London’s streets and his lifelong, sacrificial devotion to his sister.

In the Fourth Year: Anticipations of a World Peace
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
A vision of global governance emerges from the ashes of the Great War, arguing that lasting peace requires a fundamental restructuring of international relations and democratic institutions.

Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz
Ruth Plumly Thompson
A boy from Philadelphia returns to the magical Land of Oz, joining forces with a sentient pumpkin-headed man to thwart a tyrannical baron’s plot to conquer the Emerald City.

Legends of Charlemagne
Thomas Bulfinch
A collection of medieval romantic cycles, these tales follow the legendary Emperor and his paladins through a world of enchanted forests, magic weapons, and moral trials.

Marionettes, masks and shadows
Winifred H. (Winifred Harrington) Mills
Crafting a puppet is an act of creation that breathes life into inanimate materials, transforming a simple collection of wood, wire, and cloth into a performer capable of grace and drama. This guide invites readers to step behind the curtain and master the mechanics of imagination.

Meadow Grass: Tales of New England Life
Alice Brown
This collection of stories captures the quiet, interior lives of a rural New England village, where the weight of long-held tradition and the stirrings of personal desire pull against one another in constant, gentle friction.

'Midst the Wild Carpathians
Mór Jókai
The rugged mountains of seventeenth-century Transylvania serve as the backdrop for a high-stakes collision between feudal tradition, political intrigue, and the personal ruin of a once-powerful magnate.

Mother, Nurse and Infant: A Manual Especially Adapted for the Guidance of Mothers and Monthly Nurses, Comprising Full Instruction in Regard To Pregnancy, Preparation for Child-birth, and the Care of Mother and Child, and Designed to Impart so Much Knowledge of Anatomy, Physiology, Midwifery, and the Proper Use of Medicines as Will Serve Intelligently to Direct the Wife, Mother and Nurse in All Emergencies
S. P. Sackett
A practical 1889 handbook for mothers and nurses, this volume provides systematic instructions on prenatal care, safe delivery practices, and the medical management of infants in the home.

Nicolaus of Damascus' life of Augustus
of Damascus Nicolaus
The life of the man who became Augustus is a story of calculated rise, familial loyalty, and the turbulent transition of Rome from a fractured republic to a singular empire.

Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver
William Carleton
A master of deception navigates the harsh realities of nineteenth-century Ireland, where survival depends as much on a well-timed lie as on hard work and cold-blooded cunning.

Priests, Women, and Families
Jules Michelet
The quiet sanctity of the domestic hearth is a battleground, where the intimate influence of the priest clashes with the natural bonds of the family.

Quotes and Images From The Novels of Georg Ebers
Georg Ebers
A noble mind can never swim with the stream, and in this collection, the echoes of antiquity offer a timeless map of the human condition. These fragments serve as an invitation to consider the delicate balance between the weight of history and the fleeting sweetness of the present moment.

Rembrandt's Amsterdam
Frits Lugt
The canals and cobblestones of the seventeenth-century Dutch capital pulse with a new vitality when viewed through the eyes of its most famous resident, the painter Rembrandt.

Romantic castles and palaces
Unknown
Stone walls hold the echoes of history, from the silent gaze of a watchful Doge to the iron-willed ambition of a Medici prince, revealing how architecture mirrors the turbulence of human power.

Shakespeare the Boy: With Sketches of the Home and School Life, Games and Sports, Manners, Customs and Folk-lore of the Time
W. J. (William James) Rolfe
A portrait of Elizabethan life, this book reconstructs the world of a young William Shakespeare, grounding his formative years in the tangible details of 16th-century Warwickshire.

Sixpenny Pieces
A. Neil (Albert Neil) Lyons
This narrative offers a candid, unsentimental portrait of life among the London poor, centered on a weary but dedicated doctor navigating the messy realities of his patients’ daily struggles.

Telepathy, Genuine and Fraudulent
W. W. (William Wortley) Baggally
A meticulous investigator examines the boundary between genuine mental phenomena and the clever deceptions of stage performers in early 20th-century spiritualist culture.

The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories
Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
A celebrated author retreats to an ancestral English estate only to find his life haunted by a child who mirrors a ghost from the past.

The Bronze Eagle: A Story of the Hundred Days
Orczy, Emmuska Orczy, Baroness
The return of the deposed Emperor from exile sets the stage for a desperate struggle between political loyalty and personal devotion. In the shadow of a changing France, old enemies and lovers must reconcile their pasts.

The Burgomaster's Wife
Georg Ebers
Amidst the desperate, starving siege of 1574 Leyden, a husband and wife struggle to reconcile their personal devotion with the crushing demands of a city fighting for its very existence.

The Cock and Anchor
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
A young woman finds herself ensnared in a web of deceit and forced marriage, relying on a long-lost love to navigate the shadows of a dangerous and atmospheric eighteenth-century Dublin.

The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
This pioneering autobiography strips away the artifice of eighteenth-century memoir to expose the raw, unvarnished nerves of a man who felt the world far more deeply than he understood it. It stands as the foundational document of modern confessional writing.

The Crimes of England
G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
HOOK This analysis strips away diplomatic pleasantries to argue that the true path to patriotism lies in a cold-eyed confession of one's own country’s historical sins.

The Ecclesiastical Orders of Knighthood
James Herman Van der Veldt
This authoritative guide traces the origins, evolution, and modern legacy of the Catholic Church’s chivalric and military honors. It offers a clear, structured survey of the traditions that bridge medieval crusading ideals and contemporary papal recognition.

The Garden Without Walls
Coningsby Dawson
The struggle to reconcile desire with the suffocating expectations of Victorian morality haunts the life of a young man caught between his upbringing and his restless spirit. This narrative explores the tension between the safety of the garden and the unpredictable, dangerous world beyond its walls.

The Hispanic Nations of the New World: A Chronicle of Our Southern Neighbors
William R. (William Robert) Shepherd
The long, complex struggle for independence across the Americas remains a defining chapter in the formation of the modern world. This chronicle maps the shift from colonial rule to the tumultuous birth of sovereign nations.

The history of silhouettes
Emily Jackson
The silhouette—that humble, elegant shadow of a face—captures the ghost of a personality in a single, unadorned outline. This account traces the art from its origins as a social grace to its scientific and mechanical ends.

The Life, Travels, and Literary Career of Bayard Taylor
Russell H. Conwell
This biography traces the journey of a restless American spirit, from the quiet Pennsylvania countryside to the far reaches of the globe, capturing the life of a poet and traveler dedicated to the pursuit of truth.

The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2
Gilbert White
A patient observer documents the hidden rhythms of a Hampshire village, revealing how the lives of birds, plants, and local creatures mirror the intricate, changing pulse of the natural world.

The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898
Unknown
HOOK This collection of seventeenth-century colonial records offers a stark, unvarnished window into the daily friction between Spanish civil authority and the religious orders operating in the Philippine archipelago.

The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 51, 1801-1840: Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century
Unknown
These records chronicle the complex, often fractured transition of the Philippines through the early nineteenth century. They document a colonial apparatus struggling to reconcile rigid imperial mandates with the shifting realities of a distant archipelago.

The Pirate, and The Three Cutters
Frederick Marryat
The sea remains the ultimate testing ground for human character, where the thin veneer of social standing dissolves against the relentless pressure of waves, duty, and lawless ambition.

The Provinces of the Roman Empire, from Caesar to Diocletian. v. 2
Theodor Mommsen
The Roman Empire was not a monolith, but a shifting mosaic of provinces, each wrestling with the pressures of imperial administration, local identity, and the constant shadow of the frontier.

The Seventh Regiment: A Record
George L. Wood
The Seventh Ohio Volunteer Infantry traces the arc of the Civil War from the first call to arms to the final, somber homecoming of its fallen commanders. Written in the immediate aftermath of the conflict, this record transforms the raw, lived experience of soldiers into a permanent tribute to their endurance and…

The Soul of the Soldier: Sketches from the Western Battle-Front
Thomas Tiplady
In the mud and roar of the Western Front, a chaplain finds that the soul of the common soldier is revealed not in grand speeches, but in the quiet endurance of life’s most profound trials.

The Spider Web: The Romance of a Flying-Boat War Flight
T. D. Hallam
The North Sea becomes a high-stakes chessboard where silent, winged predators hunt the silent, steel ones, forever changing the nature of naval warfare.

The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12): Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes
Unknown
The Great War emerges here as a sprawling, mechanical tragedy, where human endurance is measured against the cold calculus of artillery, gas, and territorial gain. It is a chronicle of attrition, charting the brutal shifts in power across the Western and Eastern Fronts during the desperate months of 1915.

The Village Uncle (From "Twice Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
An elderly man sits by his fireside, weaving a vibrant, ghostly memory of his youth as a fisherman and his long, contented marriage to a woman he once likened to a mermaid.

The Whirl: A Romance of Washington Society
Foxcroft Davis
In the glittering, high-stakes arena of Washington, D.C., a British diplomat finds his carefully calculated life—and his disdain for American marriages—upended by an unexpected love.

Ukrainian literature
Clarence Augustus Manning
A sweeping survey of a resilient national voice, this history traces how a people’s literature survived centuries of political erasure to reclaim its rightful place in the global tradition.

Vigorish
John Berryman
HOOK Telekinetic surgeons and backwoods seers collide in a high-stakes gambling underworld. This story explores whether superior mental power can ever truly tilt the odds in a rigged game of life.

Wappin' Wharf: A Frightful Comedy of Pirates
Charles S. (Charles Stephen) Brooks
A band of retired pirates finds their quiet life of shoreline villainy disrupted when a mysterious, disguised royal infiltrates their ranks. This playful, theatrical romp balances the grit of a maritime underworld with the whimsical sensibilities of a bedtime story.

An Arrow in a Sunbeam, and Other Tales
Sarah Orne Jewett
This collection gathers gentle, moralistic stories centered on the lives of ordinary people, emphasizing the quiet, transformative power of kindness and personal reflection in late 19th-century society.