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History - British — page 4
837 public-domain history - british books, summarised. Page 4 of 18.
The Forest of Dean: An Historical and Descriptive Account
H. G. (Henry George) Nicholls
The Forest of Dean stands as a rugged, self-contained world where ancient mining customs and the deep, silent growth of timber have shaped the lives of generations. It is a portrait of a landscape defined by its resources and its fierce, independent spirit.
The Parochial History of Cornwall, Volume 2 (of 4)
Unknown
A meticulously detailed nineteenth-century survey charts the parishes of Cornwall, weaving together coastal geology, local folklore, ancient genealogies, and bloody historical anecdotes into a tapestry of regional memory.
Witchcraft and superstitious record in the south-western district of Scotland
J. Maxwell (John Maxwell) Wood
Dark, wind-swept moorlands and lonely parish Kirks hold the vanishing secrets of Scottish folk belief, preserving a history written in fear, fire, and strange midnight rituals.
A history of the Peninsular War, Vol. 3, Sep. 1809-Dec. 1810
Charles Oman
In the autumn of 1809, Napoleon’s supreme commanders converged on the Iberian Peninsula to break the Spanish defense and drive the British into the Atlantic, only to encounter a landscape transformed by scorched earth, fortress walls, and stubborn military resistance.
Wellington's Army, 1809-1814
Charles Oman
A vast imperial army moves not merely by grand strategy, but on a chaotic tide of iron, bread, and fallible human spirit.
The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields
Gilbert Slater
The transformation of rural England through the systematic partition of communal lands permanently reshaped the nation’s social landscape, replacing shared agrarian traditions with private ownership and driving smallholders from the soil.
The History of England, from the Accession of James II
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
When an absolute monarch pushes a deeply Protestant nation past its limit, a high-stakes struggle unfolds over law, faith, and the very foundation of English liberty.
The History of England, from the Accession of James II
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
A fragile new monarchy struggles to survive as foreign wars, domestic conspiracies, parliamentary friction, and financial transformation reshape the English state.
History of the Scottish Regiments in the British Army
Archibald K. Murray
From the early mercenary bands serving European crowns to the mid-nineteenth-century lines in the Crimea and India, Scotsmen built a formidable military legacy. Major Archibald K. Murray traces this long martial lineage across two dozen regiment histories.
The Englishman in China During the Victorian Era, Vol. 2 (of 2): As Illustrated in the Career of Sir Rutherford Alcock, K.C.B., D.C.L., Many Years Consul and Minister in China and Japan
Alexander Michie
A delicate game of diplomacy, culture, and coercion unfolds across nineteenth-century East Asia as Western powers demand access to reluctant imperial empires.
Our First Half-Century: A Review of Queensland Progress Based Upon Official Information
Queensland
Fifty years of pioneer grit, political maneuvering, and raw economic ambition transformed a remote Australian territory into a thriving modern state.
History of Halifax City
Thomas B. Akins
Founded as a cold British military stronghold in 1749, a remote northern outpost evolves into a bustling maritime capital through war, trade, and community resilience.
Social Transformations of the Victorian Age: A Survey of Court and Country
T. H. S. (Thomas Hay Sweet) Escott
A vast society sheds its old aristocratic insularity, transforming through iron, steam, democratic reform, and cosmopolitan wealth into a modern urban empire.
The History of Trade Unionism: (Revised edition, extended to 1920)
Sidney Webb
A century of industrial friction and secret assemblies transforms a disenfranchised working class into a formidable force capable of shaping national policy and challenging the foundations of economic power.
History of the Union Jack and Flags of the Empire
Barlow Cumberland
Flags are living history, carrying in their stitches the choices, conflicts, and compromises that built an empire.
One Irish Summer
William Eleroy Curtis
A leisurely journey through early twentieth-century Ireland reveals an island caught between a tumultuous, bloody heritage and a hopeful era of economic and social reform.
Now It Can Be Told
Philip Gibbs
Combat on the Western Front strips away every romantic illusion, leaving only mud, shattered limbs, and the quiet, enduring valor of young men who march into engineered slaughter.
Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third: From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1
Buckingham and Chandos, Richard Plantagenet Temple Nugent Brydges Chandos Grenville, Duke of
Behind the polished facades of late eighteenth-century British statecraft lay a world of constant friction, where personal rivalries and sudden crises dictated the fate of an empire.
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England: Including the Rural and Domestic Recreations, May Games, Mummeries, Shows, Processions, Pageants, and Pompous Spectacles from the Earliest Period to the Present Time
Joseph Strutt
A definitive chronicle of English recreation, this expansive survey documents the evolution of public spectacles, rural games, and the diverse entertainments that shaped the social landscape from antiquity through the early nineteenth century.
The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation
Richard Hakluyt
The world is vast, strange, and governed by customs that defy the expectations of the traveler. These accounts gather the experiences of those who ventured into the East to witness the unknown.
The Treaty of Waitangi
Thomas Lindsay Buick
This historical account examines the foundational compact of a nation, tracing the complex diplomatic and social negotiations that transformed New Zealand into a British colony. It remains a vital record of the initial collision between indigenous sovereignty and imperial expansion.
The boke of Saint Albans
Juliana Berners
This foundational fifteenth-century compendium codifies the rigorous social rituals, specialized vocabulary, and complex heraldic structures that defined the lives and identities of the late medieval gentry.
Memorials of old Cheshire
Unknown
An evocative journey through the history, landscape, and enduring traditions of a storied English county, documenting the legacy of its ancient families, architecture, and folklore.
Mr. Punch's History of Modern England, Vol. 4 (of 4).—1892-1914
Charles L. (Charles Larcom) Graves
The turn of the century brought a frantic, rattling momentum to British life, captured here in the sharp-witted mirror of a nation’s favorite humor magazine. This chronicle serves as a retrospective diary of a society racing toward its own shadow.
British Socialism: An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals
J. Ellis Barker
HOOK A detailed, critical exploration of British socialism’s doctrines, policies, and practical proposals reveals the movement’s ambitions, contradictions, and the challenges it poses to established social and economic orders.
The Agony Column of the "Times" 1800-1870
Unknown
A window into the hushed, desperate, and often coded lives of nineteenth-century Londoners, this collection captures the fleeting secrets of strangers who turned to newspaper classifieds to signal, warn, and plead with one another.
History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II
James Anthony Froude
The Reformation in England was not a single, clean event, but a slow, brutal unraveling of centuries of custom. This account traces that transformation through the power struggles, religious fervor, and political violence that defined the Tudor age.
With the Judæans in the Palestine Campaign
J. H. (John Henry) Patterson
The formation of the first Jewish military unit in centuries serves as both a tactical campaign record and a fervent defense of the right of a people to fight for their own ancestral home.
Lady Jane Grey and Her Times
Ida A. (Ida Ashworth) Taylor
A quiet, studious girl is thrust into the deadly machinery of Tudor power, becoming a pawn in a desperate game of crowns.
The Colonial Clippers
Basil Lubbock
The era of the great sailing clippers lives again through these detailed records of the ships that carried emigrants and gold across the Southern Oceans. It is a chronicle of endurance, speed, and the vanishing maritime culture of the British Mercantile Marine.
The New Forest: Its History and Its Scenery
John R. (John Richard) Wise
The New Forest holds a singular place in the English landscape, a rare expanse of ancient woodland and open heath that serves as a living archive of history, folklore, and natural wonder.
The Portsmouth Road and Its Tributaries: To-Day and in Days of Old
Charles G. (Charles George) Harper
This survey of an historic thoroughfare blends local topography with the vivid, often brutal, ghosts of England’s coaching past. It serves as a nostalgic yet critical map of a road defined by its movement and industry.
Terre Napoleón
Scott, Ernest, Sir
This historical investigation dismantles the enduring myth that a Napoleonic scientific voyage was a clandestine mission to seize Australia, revealing instead a story of maritime rivalry, cartographic errors, and cross-cultural misunderstanding.
Palace and Hovel
Daniel Joseph Kirwan
An American visitor tours Victorian London, capturing both its glittering royal halls and its squalid, dark underground haunts.
The Curiosities of Dudley and the Black Country, From 1800 to 1860: Also an Account of the Trials and Sufferings of Dud Dudley, with His Mettallum Martis: Etc
C. F. G. Clark
Black Country coal pits, roaring blast furnaces, and furious parliamentary elections come alive through archival local notices, mid-century electoral rolls, and seventeenth-century metallurgical treatises.
A Comprehensive History of Norwich
A. D. Bayne
A dense, vibrant urban portrait reveals how a singular East Anglian city grew from an ancient Celtic settlement into a powerhouse of medieval industry, religious zeal, and modern civic ambition.
Merrie England in the Olden Time, Vol. 2
George Daniel
Through tavern songs, fairground antics, and historical anecdotes, a vibrant panorama of traditional English revelry comes to life, set against the encroaching march of modern sobriety.
Cassell's History of England, Vol. 4 (of 8): From the Fall of Marlborough to the Peninsular War
Anonymous
A sprawling narrative traces Britain’s transformation across a pivotal century, where royal succession disputes, colonial uprisings, and world-shattering revolutions reshaped the global order.
The Book of Trinity College Dublin 1591-1891
Ireland) Trinity College (Dublin
Tracing three centuries of academic life, this volume captures the quiet power and human drama of a great university through its internal disputes, intellectual triumphs, and architectural changes.
How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves: Updated to 1900
William Henry Giles Kingston
A sweeping, plain-spoken chronicle tracks how a vulnerable island kingdom built, maintained, and repeatedly revolutionized the floating wooden and iron battlements that secured its global power.
The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 1
E. K. (Edmund Kerchever) Chambers
Power, bureaucracy, and public spectacle collide as Tudor and Stuart monarchs construct the apparatus that shapes early modern English drama.
The History of the 2nd Dragoons: "Royal Scots Greys"
Edward Almack
Steel blades, grey horses, and centuries of relentless service define a military legacy forged across European battlefields and African veldts.
On the Ruin of Britain
Gildas
A nation’s moral failing invites its own destruction when a forgotten people trade divine duty for internal division and foolish alliances.
Political thought in England from Locke to Bentham
Harold J. (Harold Joseph) Laski
An era of explosive political transformation lies hidden beneath eighteenth-century Britain's facade of quiet stability, awaiting a keen mind to trace its philosophical evolution.
The Chronicles of Newgate, vol. 1/2
Arthur Griffiths
For centuries, London’s infamous Newgate Prison served as the grim epicenter of English justice, where squalor, cruelty, and corruption met the city’s most desperate souls.
A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II
Sleeman, W. H. (William Henry), Sir
An observational journey through a kingdom in decay, this official diary records the delicate balance between imperial British oversight and the chaotic, predatory governance of mid-nineteenth-century Indian royalty.
The Customs of Old England
F. J. (Frederick John) Snell
Middle English society comes alive not through its grand dynastic wars, but through the strict, curious rituals that governed its medieval churches, classrooms, and courtrooms.
London Clubs: Their History & Treasures
Ralph Nevill
A window onto a vanishing world, this survey captures the smoke-filled rooms and eccentric rituals that defined the elite social architecture of London’s most storied institutions.