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34,093 public-domain books, summarised. Page 96 of 711.

Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation
William T. (William Temple) Hornaday
The clock is ticking on the survival of North America’s wild heritage, and only a radical, immediate, and unified legislative response can prevent the total extinction of the continent’s most iconic species.

The Mouse Miller and other stories
Cooke Don-Carlos
This collection of fairy tales explores the thin veil between mundane hardship and magical transformation. Through humble heroes and dark enchantment, it celebrates the enduring power of kindness, perseverance, and the simple, quiet wisdom of the heart.

Educating by story-telling
Katherine Dunlap Cather
A masterclass in the art of narrative pedagogy, this work provides a comprehensive framework for using storytelling to cultivate a child’s imagination, character, and intellect through every stage of development.

The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77
Samuel Adams Drake
A harrowing account of the Continental Army’s darkest hour, where a desperate commander-in-chief transforms a retreating, fractured remnant of men into a force capable of turning the tide of the American Revolution.

The People of the Abyss
Jack London
The misery of the London poor is not a failure of nature, but a crime of society. A firsthand account of life among the city’s most desperate, this work exposes the structural rot beneath the imperial capital.

The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 4
Frederick Whymper
The vast, untamed ocean serves as both a highway for human ambition and a realm of profound, alien mystery. This chronicle captures the grandeur and the peril of those who venture upon the deep.

The Diary of John Evelyn (Volume 1 of 2)
John Evelyn
A scholar’s lifelong observation of seventeenth-century turmoil, this chronicle captures the shifting landscape of England through the eyes of a man caught between his love for tradition and the necessity of survival.

Printers' Marks: A Chapter in the History of Typography
W. (William) Roberts
Early printers rarely signed their work, leaving their identity to be traced through the intricate, symbolic woodcuts they stamped onto their title pages. This volume serves as an essential guide for navigating those forgotten visual signatures.

The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I
Thomas Carlyle
Across the expanse of the Atlantic, two of the nineteenth century’s most profound thinkers sustain a lifelong intellectual intimacy through the patient, deliberate medium of the written letter.

The Glories of Ireland
Unknown
This compendium serves as a comprehensive, academic inventory of Irish contributions to global civilization, tracing the nation’s profound influence on religion, literature, art, and military history across two millennia.

The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory
George Santayana
Beauty is not a mystical quality inherent in the world, but rather pleasure objectified. It is the silent, internal spark that turns a mundane sensation into a cherished experience.

The Tempest
William Shakespeare
An exiled magician orchestrates a shipwreck to restore his usurped dukedom and secure a future for his daughter. Through storms and illusions, old grievances meet the possibility of reconciliation on a desolate, enchanted island.

Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896
Mary Baker Eddy
An urgent call to spiritual awakening, this collection records the formative years of a religious movement, emphasizing the triumph of divine Mind over the limitations of material existence.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
This collection captures the intellectual pulse of the United States in January 1865, offering a vibrant mosaic of wartime commentary, travelogues, and literary analysis. It serves as a vital bridge between the turbulence of the Civil War and the burgeoning national identity of the post-conflict era.

The First Printed Translations into English of the Great Foreign Classics: A Supplement to Text-Books of English Literature
William James Harris
Tracing the genealogy of English literature reveals a bridge between disparate cultures and languages, built by the patient work of early translators. This bibliography serves as a map to that intellectual landscape, cataloging the first English arrivals of foreign classics.

Toaster's Handbook: Jokes, Stories, and Quotations
Unknown
This curated collection offers a rescue for anyone dreading the podium. It provides a lighthearted, practical repository of jokes and quotations designed to transform an awkward public speaking moment into a polished, memorable performance.

Commentary on Genesis, Vol. 1: Luther on the Creation
Martin Luther
The foundations of the world and the origins of human struggle are examined through a lens of unyielding faith and rigorous scrutiny. This commentary serves as a profound, often combative, exploration of the early chapters of Genesis, offering a window into the mind of a pivotal historical figure as he grapples…

Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language
Diego Collado
Language reveals the soul of a culture, even when filtered through the rigid, Latinate structures of a seventeenth-century missionary. This meticulous guide serves as both a historical relic and a testament to the complex challenge of translation.

The Chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond: A Picture of Monastic Life in the Days of Abbot Samson
Jocelin, de Brakelond, active 1173-1215
A vivid, granular account of twelfth-century monastic life, this record captures the inner workings of a powerful English abbey under the exacting rule of a transformative leader.

The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales: With Condensed Novels, Spanish and American Legends, and Earlier Papers
Bret Harte
The wild, lawless atmosphere of the early California gold camps serves as the backdrop for these stories of unlikely redemption and biting, satirical humor. Through a blend of rough-hewn sentimentality and sharp-edged parody, this collection captures the fleeting, often harsh reality of frontier life.

The New York and Albany Post Road: From Kings Bridge to "The Ferry at Crawlier, over against Albany," Being an Account of a Jaunt on Foot Made at Sundry Convenient Times between May and November, Nineteen Hundred and Five
C. G. (Charles Gilbert) Hine
The Old Post Road is a storied spine of American history, and this account follows the winding, scenic path from Manhattan’s northern edge all the way to the capital.

American Adventures: A Second Trip 'Abroad at home'
Julian Street
The South serves as the stage for a sprawling, inquisitive travelogue that bridges the gap between the end of the nineteenth century and the modernizing impulses of the twentieth. Through a series of vignettes, the narrative explores the tension between a romanticized, aristocratic past and the creeping, inevitable…

Six Centuries of Painting
Randall Davies
This survey traces the evolution of European painting from the medieval transition to the rise of the Pre-Raphaelites. It examines how artists moved from rigid iconography toward the expressive realism that defines the Western canon.

The Frogs
Aristophanes
An odyssey of wit and desperation, this comedy follows a god’s perilous descent into the afterlife to retrieve a savior for his dying city. It remains a singular blend of slapstick absurdity and biting literary critique.

The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians
Budge, E. A. Wallis (Ernest Alfred Wallis), Sir
This collection serves as a foundational bridge into the intellectual landscape of ancient Egypt, revealing how a civilization defined its existence through myth, prayer, and administrative record. It offers a glimpse into the enduring concerns of a people who looked to their gods and their history to secure order…

The Persian Literature, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan, Volume 1
Omar Khayyam
Persian literature invites readers into a world of ancient chivalry, lush rose-gardens, and the profound, shifting struggle between human ambition and the inevitable passage of time.

Italian Hours
Henry James
The beauty of the Italian landscape, when filtered through a keen and lingering eye, reveals a history that is as much a personal meditation as it is a physical journey.

Studies in Classic American Literature
D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
A provocative, irreverent re-examination of American literature, this collection of essays strips away academic pretense to confront the raw, often unsettling spirit behind the nation’s foundational myths.

The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders
Daniel Defoe
Born in the shadow of the gallows and surviving by her wits, a woman navigates a lifetime of marriages, thievery, and narrow escapes. This is the chronicle of a survivor who defies every social expectation.

The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic: An Introduction to the Study of the Religion of the Romans
W. Warde (William Warde) Fowler
The pulse of ancient Rome beats not in the speeches of its senators, but in the rhythm of its sacred calendar. By tracing the year from the first of January to the final days of December, the religious life of a civilization reveals its deepest origins.

Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics: Second Series
James Williams
A lighthearted yet learned collection of verse, this book finds the intersection between the rigid, often absurd world of the law and the fluid, emotive realm of poetry.

Carry On, Jeeves
P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse
A supreme gentleman’s gentleman quietly engineers the salvation of his employer, a well-meaning but hopelessly dim-witted bachelor, from a series of social and romantic entanglements.

Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4: Sexual Selection In Man
Havelock Ellis
Sensory perception serves as the primary gateway for human attraction, transforming biological stimuli into the complex, often unconscious, experience of falling in love.

The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter
Beatrix Potter
These stories dwell in the quiet corners of the countryside, where small creatures navigate the perils of a world designed for giants. Through sharp observation and gentle wit, these tales capture the intimate, often mischievous lives of animals who possess all the flaws and charms of human neighbors.

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume I, Alabama Narratives
United States. Work Projects Administration
These testimonies preserve the fading voices of individuals who lived through the final years of American chattel slavery, offering a direct, unvarnished look at a world now lost to time. They serve as an essential, harrowing archive of human endurance under the totalizing weight of bondage.

The Boy Electrician
Alfred Powell Morgan
This manual serves as a comprehensive guide for the curious young builder, transforming the mysteries of electrical theory into tangible, working inventions for the home workshop.

Short story classics (Foreign), Vol. 5, French II
Unknown
This collection gathers diverse French voices into a single volume, offering a panoramic view of human nature through narratives of social pretense, military life, and provincial life.

A History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art
Thomas Wright
A comprehensive survey of the comic impulse, this volume traces the evolution of visual and literary satire from antiquity through the nineteenth century. It serves as a scholarly yet accessible roadmap for understanding how societies have used laughter and distortion to confront power, morality, and the absurd.

Path Flower, and Other Verses
Olive Tilford Dargan
The landscape of the soul is vast, and this collection maps its highest peaks and deepest, most shadowed valleys with unflinching grace. It asks what remains of us when the world’s weight presses down—and finds that beauty is the only thing capable of pushing back.

Sketches by Seymour
Robert Seymour
A collection of caricatures and sketches from the 1830s, this work captures the absurdity of London life through the misadventures of cockney sportsmen, bungling travelers, and the socially ambitious.

A Popular History of the Art of Music: From the Earliest Times Until the Present
W. S. B. (William Smythe Babcock) Mathews
This historical survey traces the evolution of Western music from its prehistoric origins to the late nineteenth century. It aims to bridge the gap between academic musicology and the general listener through a chronological, biographical narrative.

Charlotte Temple
Mrs. Rowson
A young girl’s impetuous choice to abandon her home and family leads to a devastating journey of betrayal, isolation, and eventual ruin in a foreign land. This cautionary tale remains a poignant exploration of the consequences of youthful indiscretion and the enduring power of forgiveness.

In our time
Ernest Hemingway
In this collection of vignettes and short stories, the trauma of the Great War and the brutality of the bullring converge to reveal a world stripped of its illusions. Life is rendered in spare, unsparing prose that cuts through the noise of the early twentieth century to find the singular, often jagged, truth of…

Maxims for Revolutionists
Bernard Shaw
This collection of aphorisms serves as a sharp-edged toolkit for those who wish to dismantle convention, challenge authority, and rethink the foundations of social existence. It is not a narrative, but a radical examination of the illusions—political, moral, and personal—that sustain the status quo.

The political novel
Joseph Blotner
Exploring how literature captures the machinery of power, this study examines the political novel as a unique instrument for interpreting human behavior, historical crisis, and the complex struggle between individual conscience and institutional mandates.

The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America: 1638-1870
W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois
This scholarly work provides a definitive, sobering account of how the African slave trade persisted in the United States long after it was ostensibly outlawed. It traces the tangled history of American law, commerce, and moral failure from the colonial era through the outbreak of the Civil War.

The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 02 (of 12)
Edmund Burke
This collection gathers the oratorical output of a prominent 18th-century statesman, tracking his attempts to reconcile imperial authority with the principles of liberty and fiscal accountability. It serves as a masterclass in political rhetoric and the complexities of governance during the British Empire’s expansion.

U.S. Copyright Renewals, 1961 July - December
Library of Congress. Copyright Office
This catalog serves as a formal, historical record of the creative works that regained their legal protection during the latter half of 1961. It maps the literary landscape of a generation through the lens of copyright law.