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34,093 public-domain books, summarised. Page 97 of 711.
Our Deportment: Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society
John H. Young
To navigate the intricacies of Victorian-era social life, one must master the subtle arts of etiquette, personal presentation, and the precise management of home and business affairs.
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863: Devoted to Literature and National Policy
Various
The mid-Civil War period was marked by an urgent, intellectual reckoning with the American experiment; this collection captures that volatile moment by blending political manifesto, literary critique, and personal narrative.
The Life of Tolstoy: First Fifty Years: Fifth Edition
Aylmer Maude
This biography charts the formative half-century of a literary giant, tracing how an aristocratic youth evolved into the searching, conflicted moralist who would eventually challenge the foundations of church, state, and society.
Aurora Leigh
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
This verse novel tracks a woman’s struggle to claim her vocation as an artist, arguing that true creation requires a fusion of the natural world and the spiritual soul. It serves as both a manifesto for female autonomy and a panoramic critique of Victorian social divisions.
McGuffey's Second Eclectic Reader
William Holmes McGuffey
This foundational collection of lessons for young students uses simple, rhythmic stories and poetry to teach reading while cultivating character, diligence, and empathy.
The Princess
Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron
This narrative poem unfolds as a playful, multi-layered frame story that explores the collision of Victorian gender roles, intellectual ambition, and the enduring pull of romantic love. It is a work of sophisticated artifice, blending archaic courtly romance with a sharp, nineteenth-century debate over women’s…
Esther's triumph
Emma Leslie
A girl’s prideful misunderstanding leads to a desperate, wandering flight from home, while a maligned neighbor proves that true character is often found in the most humble of places.
Justice
John Galsworthy
A man commits a desperate, singular crime to save the woman he loves, only to find that the machinery of the law—once set in motion—cannot be halted by mercy. This play serves as a harrowing indictment of a judicial system that prioritizes abstract justice over human reality.
Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine
William Carew Hazlitt
From the medieval spit to the elaborate puddings of the seventeenth century, the evolution of the English kitchen mirrors the shifting habits, manners, and social aspirations of a nation defining itself through its table.
Rembrandt and His Works: Comprising a Short Account of His Life
John Burnet
The master of light and shadow, Rembrandt lives on through his etchings, a body of work that reveals the artist’s profound ability to find truth in both the grandest historical scenes and the simplest human gestures.
The history of fashion in France
Augustin Challamel
French culture has long been synonymous with the art of the silhouette, and this sweeping chronicle traces the evolution of that obsession from ancient Gaul to the late nineteenth century. It is a detailed, era-by-era survey that connects the shifting textures of French dress to the political and social pulse of…
The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I
Euripides
These ancient dramas strip away the veneer of heroic legend to expose the raw, turbulent hearts of figures caught in the grinding machinery of fate. They remain the foundational blueprints for every tragedy that followed.
Her Royal Highness Woman
Max O'Rell
This collection of observations serves as a witty, opinionated, and unapologetically traditional guide to the roles, charms, and domestic responsibilities of women in the late nineteenth century.
Manual of Classical Erotology (De figuris Veneris)
Unknown
This rigorous, encyclopedic study of ancient sexuality functions as a clinical survey of the erotic customs, anatomy, and social perversions that characterized the classical world. It presents a systematic, detached classification of human desire as recorded in the literature of Greece and Rome.
Mountain Meditations, and some subjects of the day and the war
L. (Lizzy) Lind-af-Hageby
This collection of essays offers a contemplative look at the intersection of spiritual inquiry, social reform, and the enduring human search for meaning amidst the backdrop of the First World War.
The Patchwork Girl of Oz
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
A patchwork girl stitched from scraps and brought to life by magic embarks on a whimsical, high-stakes journey across a vibrant, enchanted landscape to save her friends from a permanent, stone-like fate.
Vera
Oscar Wilde
A young woman caught between a vow of political vengeance and the stirrings of forbidden love must decide the fate of an empire. In this high-stakes drama, the personal and the political collide with fatal consequences.
Benjamin Franklin: A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago
John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
This biography serves as a detailed chronicle of Benjamin Franklin’s life, framing his personal evolution alongside the slow, inevitable birth of the American nation. It balances his scientific curiosity and diplomatic triumphs with a candid acknowledgement of his early spiritual doubts and moral failings.
The American
Henry James
A self-made American millionaire ventures to Paris seeking the finest life has to offer, only to discover that Europe’s ancient aristocratic families guard their doors with a ruthlessness his fortune cannot buy. This is a story of collision between the blunt, honest vigor of the New World and the calcified,…
The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon
Thomas Hardy
A panoramic vision of the Napoleonic Wars, this epic drama traces the rise and fall of an empire through the eyes of both historical titans and common observers.
The World of Flying Saucers: A Scientific Examination of a Major Myth of the Space Age
Donald H. (Donald Howard) Menzel
The skies are not as empty as they appear, but the objects populating them are almost always terrestrial in origin, rooted in the familiar physics of light, atmosphere, and human error.
A House of Pomegranates
Oscar Wilde
These four fairy tales explore the heavy cost of pride and the redemptive power of mercy, weaving ornate, jewel-toned prose into narratives that feel both timeless and deeply melancholic.
Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady
Samuel Richardson
The tragedy of a young woman caught between an uncompromising family and a brilliant, predatory suitor, this monumental work explores the devastating cost of a daughter’s resistance. It is a profound study of character, cruelty, and the power of the written word.
The Book of Khalid
Ameen Fares Rihani
The story of a young Lebanese immigrant navigating the chaotic, materialist landscape of early twentieth-century New York, this philosophical narrative tracks a restless soul’s search for identity across two worlds. It is a lyrical, unconventional meditation on the struggle to reconcile ancient spiritual roots with…
The Tatler, Volume 4
Steele, Richard, Sir
This collection of 18th-century periodical essays serves as a witty, observant mirror of its age. It captures the social anxieties and moral ambitions of a society transitioning into modernity through the eyes of an urbane commentator.
The Three Bears
Anonymous
A young girl with bright curls wanders into the home of a bear family. What follows is a spirited, rhythmic confrontation that tests the boundaries of hospitality, curiosity, and the wild world of the woods.
George Sand: Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings
René Doumic
This exploration of a singular literary life captures the evolution of a woman who translated her own restless search for meaning into the heartbeat of nineteenth-century French fiction.
Robin Hood: A collection of all the ancient poems, songs, and ballads, now extant, relative to that celebrated English outlaw. To which are prefixed historical anecdotes of his life
Unknown
This collection gathers the oldest surviving verses of a legendary English outlaw, painting a portrait of a defiant yeoman whose name echoes through the ancient forests of Northern England. It serves as a definitive archive of a mythic life, tracing the transition of a folk hero from a simple forest dweller into an…
De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2): The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera
Pietro Martire d' Anghiera
The first chronicler of the Americas weaves reports of transatlantic exploration into a vivid, scholarly tapestry of discovery, documenting the irreversible collision between the Old World and the New.
The History of Painting in Italy, Vol. 2 (of 6): From the Period of the Revival of the Fine Arts to the End of the Eighteenth Century
Luigi Lanzi
The Roman and Neapolitan schools emerge through a meticulous survey of artistic lineage, where the evolution of style is traced from the early masters to the refined, reasoned aesthetics of the late eighteenth century.
Apocolocyntosis
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The halls of Olympus are rarely so crowded with absurdity as when an emperor demands to be worshipped by the gods he once ruled. This sharp satire turns the dignity of the afterlife into a chaotic farce.
Forgotten Books of the American Nursery: A History of the Development of the American Story-Book
Rosalie Vrylina Halsey
This historical study traces the evolution of American children’s literature from grim colonial primers to the early nineteenth-century emergence of a distinct, homegrown story-book culture.
Lysis
Plato
Seeking the nature of a bond that links us all, this dialogue probes the elusive heart of human connection. It examines whether we are drawn to our own reflection or to that which we fundamentally lack.
The Babylonian Legends of the Creation
Budge, E. A. Wallis (Ernest Alfred Wallis), Sir
This collection of ancient Mesopotamian texts reconstructs the foundational myths of the Babylonian universe, preserved on fragile clay tablets unearthed from the ruins of Nineveh. It offers a rare, scholarly window into how the people of the Euphrates Valley understood the origins of the heavens, the earth, and…
A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718
Wallace Notestein
This rigorous historical survey tracks the shifting legal and cultural tides of English witchcraft from the reign of Elizabeth I to the early eighteenth century. It offers a sober, evidence-based account of a turbulent era.
British Flags: Their Early History, and Their Development at Sea: With an Account of the Origin of the Flag as a National Device
William Gordon Perrin
The flags flown by the British fleet were never mere decorations; they were the essential, evolving language of naval command, maritime law, and national identity upon the high seas.
Cane
Jean Toomer
Deep-rooted in the Southern soil, these stories and poems surge with the fever of a land caught between the weight of history and the ache for a new, unwritten future.
The Book of Religions: Comprising the Views, Creeds, Sentiments, or Opinions, of All the Principal Religious Sects in the World, Particularly of All Christian Denominations in Europe and America, to Which are Added Church and Missionary Statistics, Together With Biographical Sketches
John Hayward
A panoramic exploration of human belief, this compendium maps the vast, intricate geography of religious thought across centuries and continents. It serves as an exhaustive directory of how humanity has sought to define the divine.
The Logic of Chance, 3rd edition: An Essay on the Foundations and Province of the Theory of Probability, With Especial Reference to Its Logical Bearings and Its Application to Moral and Social Science and to Statistics
John Venn
This inquiry into the nature of chance shifts the focus from abstract mathematics to the observable regularities of human life, arguing that probability is best understood as a study of long-term frequency.
Triplanetary
E. E. (Edward Elmer) Smith
This is a foundational work of space opera that presents the history of the universe as a grand, unseen chess game between two competing super-races. It serves as the opening chapter of a legendary series, establishing a scale of conflict where planets are mere pawns in a struggle spanning eons.
Heidi
Johanna Spyri
This story of a young orphan finding grace among the high Alps and the city streets remains a definitive portrait of childhood’s restorative power. It endures because it captures the fundamental human need for both the wild, untethered freedom of nature and the gentle, structured security of a home.
How to Invest Money
George Garr Henry
The path to financial stability is paved not with speculation, but with a rigorous understanding of one’s own requirements and the distinct characteristics of different investment vehicles.
Man a Machine
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Consider the human body as a complex arrangement of springs and levers, where thought is not a ghost in the shell, but a product of biological organization. This radical perspective challenges the traditional divide between the physical and the spiritual.
The Memoirs, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson: A Linked Index to the Project Gutenberg Editions
Thomas Jefferson
These volumes offer a panoramic view of a foundational era, captured through the private musings and public correspondence of a primary architect of American independence.
One thousand books for children
Unknown
This guide offers a curated roadmap to the landscape of early twentieth-century literature for young people. It serves as a practical, structured manual for adults seeking to foster reading habits through thoughtful, age-appropriate selection.
Primitive culture, vol. 1 (of 2)
Edward B. (Edward Burnett) Tylor
Tracing the evolution of human thought from its earliest origins to modern civilization, this foundational work maps the development of mythology, religion, and custom through a global lens. It stands as a pillar of modern anthropology, famously defining "culture" as the complex whole that includes knowledge,…
Q-Ships and Their Story
E. Keble (Edward Keble) Chatterton
These "mystery ships" disguised as humble merchant vessels hunted German submarines during the First World War, turning the tables on attackers through sheer nerve and hidden firepower.
The measurement of intelligence
Lewis M. (Lewis Madison) Terman
The quest to measure the human mind is a journey of refinement, turning abstract observation into a precise, standardized language of potential.