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34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 54 of 714.

Hedda Gabler
Henrik Ibsen
The daughter of a general finds herself trapped in the stifling domesticity of a marriage she never desired. Her attempt to manipulate the fates of those around her leads to a devastating unraveling.

Night and Day
Virginia Woolf
The pursuit of independence often collides with the weight of expectation, leaving quiet, thoughtful souls to navigate the blurred lines between duty and desire.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Bent, James" to "Bibirine": Volume 3, Slice 6
Various
This volume serves as a dense, scholarly portal to a vast array of historical figures, chemical properties, and geographic regions. It invites the reader to navigate the intersection of human endeavor and the physical world through the structured lens of early twentieth-century knowledge.

Poems Every Child Should Know: The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library
Unknown
Poetry serves as a bridge across the generations, capturing the fleeting joys and profound lessons of existence in verse that refuses to be forgotten. This collection gathers the essential lyrics, ballads, and meditations that have long anchored the literary education of young readers.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Patrick Braybrooke
The brilliance of a singular mind is best understood through the eyes of another; this study maps the intellectual terrain of an author who championed wonder in an age of mechanical routine.

Rebel Spurs
Andre Norton
HOOK A young Confederate veteran rides into the Arizona territory under a false name, seeking a father he only recently learned was alive.

Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
Henri Bergson
The mechanism of laughter is a social corrective, a fleeting rebellion against the rigidity of life that reveals the inherent absurdity of human habits and mechanical movements.

The house at Pooh Corner
A. A. (Alan Alexander) Milne
The forest is an enchanted place where time holds its breath, and a little boy and his bear continue to play, even as the horizon of childhood begins to widen.

The Common Reader
Virginia Woolf
The act of reading is not a scholarly chore but a vibrant, communal engagement with the soul of literature. By celebrating the perspective of the "common reader," these essays reclaim the joy of books from the heavy hand of academic dogma.

Heretics
G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
The central argument is that the modern world is not suffering from a lack of facts or science, but from a fatal erosion of philosophy and the loss of a clear, dogmatic center to life.

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things
Lafcadio Hearn
The haunting beauty of Japanese folklore finds its most evocative expression in these tales of the uncanny, where the boundaries between the living, the dead, and the natural world dissolve into mist.

Cattle and Cattle-breeders
William McCombie
A seasoned cattle breeder shares a lifetime of hard-won wisdom, detailing the practical realities of managing livestock and the evolution of the Scottish agricultural trade during the nineteenth century.

The Tyranny of Weakness
Charles Neville Buck
HOOK A young man and woman find their long-cherished love suffocated by the rigid demands of duty, family, and the heavy weight of the past.

Samphire
John Cowper Powys
This collection of verse captures the sharp, cold air of the English countryside and the wild, lonely reaches of the human psyche. It is a work of jagged intensity, where the mundane world of piers and farmyards constantly threatens to tear open, revealing ancient gods and cosmic terrors beneath.

One thousand secrets of wise and rich men revealed
C. A. Bogardus
This manual serves as a practical repository for the nineteenth-century citizen, blending technical instruction, agricultural wisdom, and populist political commentary. It acts as a comprehensive guide for those navigating the demands of self-reliance and civic life.

Jerry's Charge Account
Hazel Hutchins Wilson
An impulsive boy’s decision to open a secret charge account at a local grocery store spirals into a web of anxiety, neighborhood mystery, and a test of his integrity.

Opticks
Isaac Newton
This treatise serves as a foundational pillar of modern physical science, meticulously detailing the fundamental nature of light and color. It strips away ancient assumptions to reveal that light is not a single, pure substance, but a complex composite of refrangible rays.

A Dictionary of Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words: Used at the Present Day in the Streets of London
John Camden Hotten
Language is a living, breathing creature that thrives in the shadows of the city as much as in the light of the parlor. This collection serves as a sprawling, untamed map of the secret tongues spoken by London's vagabonds, dandies, and thieves.

The tale of Fatty Coon
Arthur Scott Bailey
A perpetually hungry, overly curious young raccoon finds himself constantly outsmarting his own gluttony in the woods near a bustling farm.

Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873
Various
This collection serves as a vibrant, kaleidoscopic window into the intellectual and cultural preoccupations of 1873, blending travelogue, political commentary, and serialized fiction.

An ideal husband
Oscar Wilde
A high-stakes political thriller draped in the glittering velvet of London society, where a single long-buried secret threatens to dismantle an impeccable reputation.

Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius
Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius
The life of a ruler, however vast his empire, is ultimately a private struggle to maintain integrity. These inward reflections reveal how a man remains upright while surrounded by the chaos and corruption of the world.

A Negro Explorer at the North Pole
Matthew Alexander Henson
A man of remarkable endurance recounts his journey to the top of the world, capturing the raw, frozen reality of the 1909 expedition that reached the North Pole.

The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance
Corra Harris
The epistolary romance of two intellectual combatants, this story captures the tension between the cold precision of a city editor and the passionate, pastoral spirit of a young woman in the South.

Selections from the Writings of Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
The individual is the measure of all things, and the deepest responsibilities of existence reside not in the crowd, but in the solitary heart.

Great Artists, Vol 1.: Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer
Jennie Ellis Keysor
Art is a testament to the highest human aspirations, a shared inheritance that elevates the everyday and offers a solace against the sorrows and cares of life. Through the stories of four masters, this volume invites readers to discover the beauty that transcends time and geography.

Star Surgeon
Alan Edward Nourse
The path to becoming a healer requires more than technical expertise; it demands the courage to discard one's crutches and stand entirely alone. This narrative follows a young alien physician navigating the biases of a human-dominated medical establishment to prove his worth among the stars.

A passage to India
E. M. (Edward Morgan) Forster
The Marabar Caves hold an echo that unmakes the world, shattering the fragile alliances between the British rulers and their Indian subjects. This haunting exploration of distance and misunderstanding remains a definitive portrait of colonial tension.

The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust'
H. B. (Henry Bernard) Cotterill
This guide provides an accessible entry point into the origins of the Faustian legend and the complex, monumental drama crafted by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It bridges the gap between folklore and high literature with warmth and scholarly clarity.

Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
This collection offers an intimate, unvarnished portrait of a literary giant, revealing the man behind the plays through his own private correspondence. It is an essential window into the mind of a quiet, fiercely observant genius.

The Hoosier School-boy
Edward Eggleston
HOOK A farm boy battles bullies, a cruel master, and poverty to claim an education. His journey through the rugged schoolrooms of the Indiana frontier is a testament to the power of character over circumstance.

Red Rose and Tiger Lily
L. T. Meade
A spirited young woman navigates the anxieties of her father’s impending remarriage while guiding a group of impulsive friends through a web of secrets, social mishaps, and sudden financial ruin.

Much Ado about Nothing
William Shakespeare
A quick-witted war of words erupts into a dangerous conspiracy, testing the loyalties and romantic resolve of two distinct couples in sunny Messina. This enduring comedy balances sharp, cynical repartee against the high stakes of honor, reputation, and public shame.

Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach
Annie Roe Carr
A quick-witted teenager and her friends venture to Florida, where they trade winter chills for the intrigue of orange groves and the pursuit of mysterious men stalking their vacation.

The Forester's Daughter: A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range
Hamlin Garland
A delicate, recovering Easterner finds strength in the Colorado wilderness, drawn to a forest supervisor’s daughter whose rugged self-reliance and grace transform his outlook on life.

Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II
Cornelius Tacitus
A searing, unsentimental portrait of a fractured empire, this history chronicles the violent collapse of Nero’s dynasty and the ruthless struggle for the throne that followed.

Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester: A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See
G. H. (George Henry) Palmer
This guidebook offers a precise, elegant tour through the architectural evolution and long, storied life of one of England’s most significant ecclesiastical landmarks.

Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery
Robert Means Lawrence
The power of the human imagination remains the most potent, yet often overlooked, ingredient in the history of medical healing.

Picture plays
Marguerite Merington
The imagined lives of painted figures take center stage in this collection, where the boundaries between artistic canvas and human reality dissolve. These short dramas breathe motion into static masterpieces, exploring the private longings of those trapped within gilt frames.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
J. (James) Ingram
This foundational record of early English history captures the raw, unfolding reality of a nation in flux, documented by the hands of the very people living through its transformation. It stands as the essential primary source for the Anglo-Saxon and early Norman eras.

Helen and Arthur
Caroline Lee Hentz
A sensitive, fearful young girl finds her courage through the guidance of a patient mentor, while her sister’s pride leads to a tragic downfall.

Helps to Latin Translation at Sight
Edmund Luce
Mastering an unfamiliar classical sentence requires moving beyond simple mechanical decipherment to grasp how syntax, historical narrative, and literary form build meaning together. True fluency emerges when raw grammatical analysis transforms into immediate comprehension.

Little Miss Grouch: A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's Maiden Transatlantic Voyage
Samuel Hopkins Adams
A chance encounter on a transatlantic liner spirals into a high-stakes game of hide-and-seek between two passengers fleeing the suffocating expectations of their wealthy families.

More Russian Picture Tales
Valerian Viliamovich Karrik
These traditional Russian folk stories offer a whimsical window into a world where animals speak, magic is casual, and the smallest creatures often outwit the strongest.

The Curious Lore of Precious Stones: Being a description of their sentiments and folk lore, superstitions, symbolism, mysticism, use in medicine, protection, prevention, religion, and divination. Crystal gazing, birth-stones, lucky stones and talismans, astral, zodiacal, and planetary
George Frederick Kunz
Crystals and gems have long held a mirror to the human soul, reflecting our deepest fears of misfortune and our most enduring hopes for divine protection. These silent stones, once thought to possess a life and will of their own, remain a powerful testament to the ways we project meaning onto the natural world.

Eric
S. B. C. (Susan Blagge Caldwell) Samuels
A young boy’s grand tour of Europe becomes a series of high-stakes adventures, testing his integrity under the sea and in the face of false accusations. This earnest morality tale highlights the power of character in the nineteenth century.

Four Plays of Gil Vicente
Gil Vicente
A vivid glimpse into early 16th-century Portuguese life and spirituality, these plays blend allegory, satire, and pastoral charm to explore human nature, society, and the soul’s journey with sharp wit and heartfelt insight.

The Dust Flower
Basil King
A rash impulse transforms a spurned lover’s vengeful prank into an extraordinary test of devotion, dignity, and redemption.