Free summaries
British Literature — page 51
4,564 public-domain british literature books, summarised. Page 51 of 96.
The Riddle of the Purple Emperor
Thomas W. Hanshew
Two women lie dead in a darkened riverside mansion, yet the real target of a bitter conspiracy is a stolen Indian gem.
The Shadow of Life
Anne Douglas Sedgwick
A boy and girl grow up along the Scottish moors, forged together by early loss and a fierce natural sympathy, only to spend their adult lives locked in a quiet, relentless battle between her passion for living and his drift toward total emotional detachment.
The Threatening Eye
E. F. (Edward Frederick) Knight
A desperate young woman flees her past in London, falling into the clutches of a revolutionary cult only to discover that love and honesty offer a far more radical redemption than political violence.
The Wooden Horse
Hugh Walpole
Standing high above a Cornish seaside town, an ancient ancestral estate frames a sharp clash of generations, as a son hardened by social pride confronts a long-absent father whose free-spirited life defies family convention.
They and I
Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka) Jerome
Life in the country sounds idyllic until four willful offspring, an absurd yellow landau, and an unexpected cow all demand your immediate attention.
Three Hours after Marriage
John Gay
A foolish old virtuoso marries a flirtatious young bride, only to face an immediate horde of rivals, absurd disguises, and theatrical chaos.
A Crystal Age
W. H. (William Henry) Hudson
A man wakes into a world he does not know, where beauty rules, love is beyond his reach, and time itself has lost its sting.
Beggars on Horseback
F. Tennyson (Fryniwyd Tennyson) Jesse
In nine luminous, sharply drawn tales, human hearts gamble their quiet safety against sudden passions, dark secrets, and the overwhelming tides of the sea.
Bothwell
James Grant
In sixteenth-century Edinburgh, political plotters and lawless borderers clash around a royal court where passion and conspiracy carry equal peril.
Crying for the Light
J. Ewing (James Ewing) Ritchie
A young actress and her reform-minded husband navigate the hypocrisy of nineteenth-century English society to uncover a stolen inheritance and forge a life dedicated to social justice.
Mammon and Co
E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
A high-society marriage turns into a high-stakes transaction as Victorian London's elite trade their aristocratic titles for American gold and fraudulent mine shares.
Mr. Punch at the Seaside
Unknown
Victorian seaside holidays sound splendid until you actually step onto the shingle, where bad brass bands, dishonest landladies, and treacherous tides conspire to ruin your much-needed rest.
Prose Idylls, New and Old
Charles Kingsley
A sharp observer of the natural world walks through woods, riverbeds, and coastal cliffs, finding in every landscape a lively argument for stopping to look closely.
Snap: A legend of the Lone Mountain
Clive Phillipps-Wolley
A schoolboy prank turns into a wild, high-altitude struggle for survival across the untouched peaks of the 19th-century Canadian Rockies.
The Golden Scorpion
Sax Rohmer
A sinister shadow falls across London as brilliant minds die of unknown causes, leaving behind only the broken fragment of a golden scorpion's tail.
The Grey Room
Eden Phillpotts
A grand English manor house conceals an elegant bedroom that leaves its occupants dead by morning with no sign of violence, baffling police, scientists, and clergymen alike until an old Italian nobleman uncovers its centuries-old, lethal origin.
The Humour and Pathos of Anglo-Indian Life: Extracts from his brother's note-book, made by Dr. Ticklemore
J. E. Mayer
A sharp-eyed tour of British military and civilian stations in nineteenth-century India, framed through the genial banter and shared yarns of shipboard travelers.
The Lovels of Arden
M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon
A father's financial ruin forces his daughter into a mercenary marriage with the wealthy buyer of her ancestral home, kindling an agonizing conflict between duty, love, and maternal devotion.
The Pursuit of the House-Boat: Being Some Further Account of the Divers Doings of the Associated Shades, under the Leadership of Sherlock Holmes, Esq
John Kendrick Bangs
When a band of historical rogues abducts the afterlife's favorite club, the greatest minds of the past must team up with Sherlock Holmes to navigate chaos on the high seas.
The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q"
Arthur Quiller-Couch
A classic Latin hymn to love pairs with original verse and dramatic theater to celebrate human devotion against the relentless passage of time.
Those barren leaves
Aldous Huxley
A grand Italian villa gathers privileged cynics, self-styled romance addicts, and exhausted intellectuals to talk endlessly of art, passion, and meaning, while life quietly slips past them.
When William Came
Saki
A man returns from a long illness abroad to find his homeland conquered, his society comfortably collaborating, and the burden of resistance left entirely to the young.
Adventures of Bindle
Herbert George Jenkins
A cheerful London furniture mover navigates marital squalls, wartime air raids, and tedious religious zealots by turning everyday life into a series of harmless, inventive pranks.
Combed Out
F. A. (Frederick Augustus) Voigt
An unsparing account of life behind the lines, where men are ground down not by glorious combat, but by freezing mud, trivial tyranny, and the indifferent horror of the medical wards.
Lady Lilith
Stephen McKenna
Sensationalism, privilege, and self-destruction collide in a sharp portrait of high society teetering on the edge of the First World War.
Measure for Measure
William Shakespeare
When a strict leader enforces an ancient morality law, a young man faces execution, forcing his sister to choose between her virtue and his life.
Meet Mr Mulliner
P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse
In the snug bar-parlour of the Anglers' Rest, an endlessly inventive storyteller holding court over pint glasses weaves wild, improbable yarns detailing the absurd romantic and personal crises of his vast extended family.
Round the Sofa
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
An invalid recovering in an Edinburgh lodging house finds solace in a collection of fireside tales that span generations, countries, and social classes.
Sylvia & Michael: The later adventures of Sylvia Scarlett
Compton MacKenzie
Left stranded by broken vows and a world sliding into total conflict, a fiercely independent woman wanders across war-torn Eastern Europe, trading her safety to shelter the vulnerable and learning what it truly means to preserve the human soul.
The Green Mirror: A Quiet Story
Hugh Walpole
A young man enters an ancient, stifling English family, igniting a war of possession that forces a devoted daughter to choose between her inheritance and her freedom.
The Haunting of Low Fennel
Sax Rohmer
A secluded English cottage harbors a sinister force, while half a world away, an ancient curse turns a desert expedition into a deadly nightmare.
The Hundred, and Other Stories
Gertrude Hall Brownell
A child’s wild holiday evening in a brownstone, a student’s clumsy heartbreak in the spring, a fading girl watching Florence from a balcony, a young prodigal with a violin, and a quiet woman untangling a small-town love triangle—these stories map the sweet, stubborn longings of ordinary lives.
The Socialist
Guy Thorne
A young duke abandons his inherited fortune and aristocratic privilege to champion the Socialist movement alongside a talented, resolute actress.
The Story of the Other Wise Man
Henry Van Dyke
A Median priest spends thirty-three years following a miraculous star, missing every meeting with the Messiah because he cannot ignore the suffering people directly in his path.
Arbuthnotiana: The Story of the St. Alb-ns Ghost (1712) A Catalogue of Dr. Arbuthnot's Library (1779)
Unknown
This collection pairs a sharp, bite-sized political lampoon from the era of Queen Anne with a sober, granular accounting of an intellectual’s private life. It offers a rare glimpse into both the public vitriol and the private study of the eighteenth century.
Fors Clavigera (Volume 5 of 8): Letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain
John Ruskin
The life of a nation is written in its smallest acts, and the decay of an empire begins in the moral indifference of its children. This work serves as an urgent, eccentric, and deeply personal call for a return to craftsmanship, sincerity, and the stewardship of the common good.
Guy and Pauline
Compton MacKenzie
The quiet, suffocating gravity of a first, ill-fated love unfolds against the slow cycle of seasons in a secluded English village.
In the High Valley: Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series
Susan Coolidge
An English girl's rigid provincial pride meets the wide, generous spaces of the American West, where high elevations and shared labors slowly melt away her deep-seated prejudices.
Lord Loveland Discovers America
C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson
An arrogant British aristocrat arrives in America seeking a wealthy bride, only to be stripped of his title and identity, forcing him to navigate the harsh realities of the working class.
Mistress Spitfire: A Plain Account of Certain Episodes in the History of Richard Coope, Gent., and of His Cousin, Mistress Alison French, at the Time of the Revolution, 1642-1644
Unknown
The clash of royalist and parliamentarian loyalties forces a divided family into a desperate, clandestine struggle for survival amidst the chaos of the English Civil War.
One Snowy Night: Long ago at Oxford
Emily Sarah Holt
Faithful Christians face severe persecution in medieval England when they dare to place Scripture above church authority.
Some Experiences of an Irish R.M
E. Oe. (Edith Oenone) Somerville
An English officer arrives in the Irish countryside as a resident magistrate, only to discover that local customs, fox-hunting, and cunning neighbors defy every expectation of order.
A Fair Penitent
Wilkie Collins
A celebrated eighteenth-century French actress walks away from the stage and her elite social circle to seek absolute spiritual redemption behind the stone walls of a Carmelite convent.
Anti-Achitophel (1682): Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden
Samuel Pordage
The literary landscape of 1682 is marked by high-stakes political intrigue, where poets sparred with biblical allegory to influence the future of the English crown. These three verse replies offer a rare, unfiltered look at the fierce intellectual resistance mounted against a towering contemporary masterpiece.
Hero and Leander and Other Poems
Christopher Marlowe
This collection preserves a vibrant, unfinished narrative poem centered on the mythic lovers of Abydos and Sestos, complemented by pastoral lyrics and dramatic dialogues. It serves as a striking example of Elizabethan verse, shifting from the sensuous, flowing style of its original author to the more moralistic and…
Materfamilias
Ada Cambridge
A headstrong woman chronicles her life from a defiant elopement to the complex, often contentious, challenges of managing an Australian family. It is a portrait of motherhood as an all-consuming, fierce, and occasionally suffocating vocation.
Mrs. Fitz
J. C. (John Collis) Snaith
An unlikely band of British aristocrats becomes entangled in the desperate, cloak-and-dagger struggle of a runaway Illyrian princess, leading them from quiet country estates to the dangerous heart of European political intrigue.
Secret Bread
F. Tennyson (Fryniwyd Tennyson) Jesse
A secret, an inheritance, and the heavy weight of family legacy collide in this sprawling, atmospheric chronicle of a life lived against the backdrop of the Cornish moors.