The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 448
34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 448 of 714.
American Masters of Painting: Being Brief Appreciations of Some American Painters
Charles H. (Charles Henry) Caffin
This collection offers a series of focused, appreciative portraits of significant American artists, charting the evolution of a national aesthetic through the eyes of a critic deeply committed to the idea of artistic sincerity.
Anne Hereford: A Novel
Wood, Henry, Mrs.
An orphaned governess finds herself trapped in a labyrinth of family secrets, spectral occurrences, and dangerous legacies within the walls of a grand, forbidding English estate.
Artists and Arabs
Henry Blackburn
This account of a mid-Victorian painting expedition to North Africa offers an intimate, sun-drenched portrait of a landscape and society undergoing rapid transformation. It serves as both a practical guide for the artistic traveler and a candid meditation on the clash between European industrial aesthetics and the…
At the Ghost Hour. The House of the Unbelieving Thomas
Paul Heyse
HOOK A centuries-old haunted house in a German town becomes the stage for a clash between human longing and the petty, invisible machinations of the restless dead.
Betty Alden: The first-born daughter of the Pilgrims
Jane G. (Jane Goodwin) Austin
The first-born daughter of the Pilgrims navigates the quiet triumphs and profound losses of early colonial life, standing as a witness to the shifting burdens of her famous parents and their generation.
Between Friends
Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
An embittered, reclusive sculptor finds his cold existence challenged by a young model and a haunting past. This story maps the slow, painful thawing of a man who has retreated into the wreckage of his own grievances.
Brave British soldiers and the Victoria Cross: a general account of the regiments and men of the British Army, and stories of the brave deeds which won the prize "for valour"
Unknown
This nineteenth-century chronicle celebrates the extraordinary courage of British soldiers, blending tactical military history with intimate accounts of the individual deeds that earned the coveted Victoria Cross.
Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus
Laura Lee Hope
Bunny Brown and his sister Sue are two spirited children whose summer on their grandparents' farm turns into an ambitious endeavor to create a grand circus, complete with homemade animals, trapeze acts, and a mysterious new friend.
By the Light of the Soul: A Novel
Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
The story of a young woman navigating the quiet, crushing weight of New England duty, this narrative explores how the small, rigid choices of youth ripple outward to shape an entire life.
Christ in Flanders
Honoré de Balzac
The storm at sea serves as a divine crucible, stripping away the pretenses of human pride to reveal who among us truly possesses the capacity for faith. This haunting narrative intertwines a timeless legend of Flemish waters with a profound, surreal meditation on the decline of spiritual authority in the modern age.
Critiques and Addresses
Thomas Henry Huxley
The pursuit of truth requires both the rigour of a laboratory and the courage to challenge long-held dogmas, whether they reside in the halls of government or the deep strata of the earth.
Daughter of the Sun: A Tale of Adventure
Jackson Gregory
A spirited American adventurer discovers that a mysterious, self-styled Aztec queen holds the key to a long-lost fortune hidden in the rugged, treacherous mountains of Lower California.
Dross
Henry Seton Merriman
A disaffected English gentleman finds himself entangled in the crumbling politics and hidden fortunes of the French Second Empire, where a stolen fortune dictates his fate.
Elements of Criticism, Volume I
Kames, Henry Home, Lord
This expansive inquiry seeks to ground human aesthetics in the observable mechanics of our minds, arguing that art is a science of cause and effect.
Elocution Simplified: With an Appendix on Lisping, Stammering, Stuttering, and Other Defects of Speech
Walter K. Fobes
Mastering the voice is a mechanical craft, a physical discipline that transforms raw sound into the persuasive art of oratory.
First course in biology
L. H. (Liberty Hyde) Bailey
This foundational text bridges the divide between abstract scientific theory and the tangible realities of the natural world. It encourages readers to look beyond the classroom and find the mechanics of life in their own backyards.
Frauds and Follies of the Fathers: A Review of the Worth of Their Testimony to the Four Gospels
J. M. (Joseph Mazzini) Wheeler
This historical investigation challenges the reliability of early Christian writers, arguing that their widespread use of forgery and myth undermines the foundational authority of the New Testament Gospels.
Garthowen: A Story of a Welsh Homestead
Allen Raine
HOOK A young wanderer returns to his Welsh homestead to find his family fractured by secrets and broken promises, setting into motion a quiet, pastoral drama of redemption, integrity, and the enduring power of home.
Graded Poetry: Third Year
Unknown
Poetry is the language of childhood, a rhythmic bridge between the natural world and the developing mind. This collection serves as a carefully curated treasury of verse, designed to be read aloud, shared, and savored.
Gutta-Percha Willie: The Working Genius
George MacDonald
HOOK A curious, inventive boy transforms his world through the dignity of labor, discovering that the most profound miracles are found in the careful, everyday work of helping others.
History of the Second Massachusetts Regiment of Infantry: Beverly Ford
Daniel Oakey
The cavalry screen is drawn back, revealing a landscape of clashing sabers, shifting loyalties, and the raw, kinetic energy of a war-weary army finally finding its footing.
Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts Relative to the Marshpee Tribe
William Apess
The struggle for self-governance by the Mashpee people against state-imposed oversight and land appropriation is a seminal document of nineteenth-century Indigenous resistance. It exposes the legal mechanisms used to strip a community of its rights and dignity.
International Language and Science: Considerations on the Introduction of an International Language into Science
Louis Couturat
The global scientific community requires a common tongue to transcend linguistic barriers, and this treatise presents a pragmatic, logical solution for modern researchers. It argues that a universal auxiliary language is essential for intellectual progress.
Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (2 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)
William Henry Hurlbert
Upon the future of Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire. This diary of an American observer captures the turbulent heart of the Irish Land War, offering a sharp, contemporary witness to the struggle between local tradition and the reach of the law.
J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
HOOK These tales explore the thin membrane between the tangible world and the encroaching past, where ancient grievances and spectral figures refuse to remain buried.
Jungle days
William Beebe
The dense, breathing world of the South American rainforest offers a stage where every organism plays a fleeting part in a vast, interconnected drama of survival. This record of observations invites the reader to witness the intricate, often brutal elegance of life in the Guiana jungle.
Kathleen
Christopher Morley
A group of imaginative Oxford students, enchanted by a stranger’s lost letter, concoct an elaborate scheme to track down its author. What begins as a playful literary competition descends into a hilarious, high-stakes comedy of errors.
King Henry VI, Part 3
William Shakespeare
A relentless, blood-drenched struggle for the English throne, this play charts the brutal collapse of a kingdom where family ties are severed by the sword and oaths are mere casualties of war.
Letters from France
Isaac Alexander Mack
These dispatches from the front lines of the Great War capture the daily reality of a young officer, moving from the excitement of deployment to the gritty, repetitive exhaustion of trench warfare. They offer an unvarnished look at a soldier's life, ending abruptly with his final letter before the Somme.
Life of St. Declan of Ardmore and Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore
Unknown
These medieval Irish biographies depict the lives of two foundational saints, blending historical tradition with local legend to chronicle the early spread of Christianity through the Decies and beyond.
Lynch-law
James Elbert Cutler
The American history of mob violence reflects a deep, enduring struggle between the rule of law and the impulses of the crowd. This study traces that dark legacy from colonial origins to the turn of the twentieth century.
My Buried Treasure
Richard Harding Davis
The promise of buried treasure acts as a prism, reflecting the raw greed and high-strung caution of two men bound by a strange, lopsided contract. It is a dry, witty meditation on the clash between the romantic imagination and the cold reality of business.
Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc
Various
This publication serves as a nineteenth-century clearinghouse for the curious, where Victorian scholars and laymen converge to trade fragments of history, linguistics, and literature. It transforms the act of inquiry into a collective, public pursuit.
Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc
Various
A repository of Victorian curiosity, this periodical serves as a vibrant, collaborative clearinghouse where the era’s intellectuals, antiquarians, and hobbyists trade historical insights and solve obscure literary puzzles.
Old Fashioned Flowers, and other out-of-door studies
Maurice Maeterlinck
To walk through a garden is to engage in a silent dialogue with the infinite, where every petal holds a secret about the nature of existence. This meditation invites readers to reconsider the profound relationship between human consciousness and the natural world.
Our Revolution: Essays on Working-Class and International Revolution, 1904-1917
Leon Trotsky
The Russian Revolution was not merely a local collapse of the Czarist state, but a fundamental collision between an emergent, disciplined proletariat and a crumbling, centuries-old autocratic order.
Pretty Geraldine, the New York Salesgirl
Miller, Alex. McVeigh, Mrs.
A New York salesgirl’s life is upended by a web of deception, leading her from the city’s bustling streets to the perils of an unwanted abduction and a sudden inheritance.
Puck's Broom: The wonderful adventures of George Henry & his dog Alexander who went to seek their fortunes in the Once upon a time land
E. Gordon (Edgar Gordon) Browne
A young boy and his loyal dog slip through the veil of reality to explore a land of dreams, guided by the mischievous spirit of Puck.
Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914
Various
A sharp, witty window into the polite absurdities of Edwardian England, this collection captures the specific, fleeting anxieties of a society poised on the precipice of the Great War.
Putois: 1907
Anatole France
A lie told to avoid a tedious dinner party spirals into a town-wide legend, demonstrating how easily fiction takes on the hard, sharp edges of truth. This is a story about the birth of a myth and the vulnerability of the human mind to its own inventions.
Rosa Bonheur
François Crastre
This biography chronicles the life of a singular nineteenth-century French painter who defied social conventions to become one of history’s most celebrated animal artists. Her story is one of unwavering devotion to the craft of observation and the pursuit of artistic independence.
Rose of Dutcher's Coolly
Hamlin Garland
The odyssey of a gifted girl from a Wisconsin valley to the pulse of Chicago, this portrait captures the fierce tension between rural roots and the hunger for a life of the mind. It is a story of independence earned through the difficult shedding of old selves.
Saddle and Mocassin
Francis Francis
A restless observer travels through the rugged, untamed landscapes of the American West and Northern Mexico, capturing the fading frontier with a sharp eye for the eccentric characters inhabiting its vast, sun-drenched plains.
Select Conversations with an Uncle (Now Extinct) and Two Other Reminiscences
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
A breezy, cynical collection of monologues captures the Victorian obsession with propriety, fashion, and the quiet, crushing weight of social expectation through the eyes of an eccentric uncle.
Selected Poems
John Masefield
This collection gathers the work of a poet obsessed with the raw, rhythmic toil of the sea and the fleeting, often tragic beauty of human endeavor. It serves as a window into a world where the salt-spray and the soul’s deepest longings are inextricably linked.
Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2
Unknown
The nineteenth-century American literary landscape comes to life in these pages, capturing a nation in transition through stories of war, frontier justice, romantic misunderstanding, and the quiet struggles of the disenfranchised.
Six Discourses on the Miracles of Our Saviour, and Defences of His Discourses
Thomas Woolston
A polemical challenge to the literal interpretation of the Gospels, this work argues that the miraculous narratives of Jesus are intended as spiritual allegories rather than historical accounts. It remains a provocative relic of early Enlightenment religious controversy.
Special Messenger
Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
Behind the lines of the American Civil War, a resourceful woman risks everything as a spy, navigating a world of shifting allegiances and lethal secrets.