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1084 books found.

• The Pirate: Andrew Lang Edition

  By Walter Scott

  "The Pirate" is also the title of novels by Harold Robbins and Frederick Marryat The Pirate (published at the end of 1821 with the date 1822) is one of the Waverley novels by Sir Walter Scott, based roughly on the life of John Gow who features as Captain Cleveland. The setting is the southern tip of the main island of Shetland (which Scott visited in 1814), towards the end of the 17th century, with 1689 as the likely date of the main incidents.

  42 chapters · About 830 minutes of published text

• The Playboy of the Western World

  By J. M. Synge

  In a Mayo public house a frightened stranger, Christy Mahon, announces that he has killed his father, and the villagers, led by the publican's daughter Pegeen Mike, are enchanted. When his father turns up alive, the heroic story and the village's admiration meet a harsher test.

  3 chapters · About 85 minutes of published text

• The Plays of Sophocles: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

  By Sophocles (translated by Francis Storr)

  Oedipus the King, who has sworn to find the murderer of the previous king of Thebes, discovers that he is the man himself; Oedipus at Colonus follows the blind exile to his death in Athens, and Antigone defies Creon to bury her brother. Each play is one chapter.

  3 chapters · About 161 minutes of published text

• The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

  By Edgar Allan Poe

  All of Poe's poems in one illustrated volume of 1900, from The Raven, The Bells, Ulalume and Annabel Lee to the early Tamerlane and Al Aaraaf. Many are about death, loss and the dead beloved.

  49 chapters · About 88 minutes of published text

• The possessed: or, The devils

  By Fyodor Dostoyevsky (translated by Constance Garnett)

  Dostoevsky's 1872 novel, also called The Devils, in Constance Garnett's translation. A circle of provincial revolutionaries under the sinister Pyotr Verkhovensky draws in a charismatic aristocrat. Dark, comic and prophetic about political fanaticism.

  23 chapters · About 1101 minutes of published text

• The Prince and the Pauper

  By Mark Twain

  The Prince and the Pauper is a novel by American author Mark Twain. It was first published in 1881 in Canada, before its 1882 publication in the United States. The novel represents Twain's first attempt at historical fiction. The plot concerns the accession of nine-year-old Edward VI to the throne of England in 1547 and his interactions with look-alike Tom Canty, a London pauper who lives with his abusive, alcoholic father.

  31 chapters · About 299 minutes of published text

• The Princess and the Goblin

  By George MacDonald

  The Princess and the Goblin is a children's fantasy novel by George MacDonald. It was published in 1872 by Strahan & Co., with black-and-white illustrations by Arthur Hughes. Strahan had published the story and illustrations as a serial in the monthly magazine Good Words for the Young, beginning November 1870.

  32 chapters · About 220 minutes of published text

• The Princess: A Medley

  By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  A prince betrothed since childhood to Princess Ida finds she has founded a women's college where no man may enter, and he and two friends sneak in disguised as women. Tennyson's 'medley' in blank verse, with its songs between the parts, takes the question of women's education first in jest and then in earnest.

  9 chapters · About 116 minutes of published text

• The Railway Children

  By E. Nesbit

  The Railway Children is a children's book by Edith Nesbit. Originally serialised in The London Magazine in thirteen instalments from January 1905 to January 1906, it was published in book form in 1906. It has been adapted for the screen several times, of which the best known is the 1970 film version.

  14 chapters · About 257 minutes of published text

• The Rape of the Lock

  By Alexander Pope

  When a young baron cuts a lock from Belinda's hair, Pope turns a real quarrel between two families into a mock epic with sylphs, a battle of the fans and a stolen lock that rises to the stars. The five cantos are given without the editor's introduction and notes.

  6 chapters · About 29 minutes of published text

• The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War

  By Stephen Crane

  The Red Badge of Courage is an 1895 war novel by American author Stephen Crane. The novel was published on 3 October 1895. Taking place during the American Civil War, the story is about a young private of the Union Army, Henry Fleming, who flees from the field of battle. Overcome with shame, he longs for a wound, a "red badge of courage", to counteract his cowardice. When his regiment once again faces the enemy, Henry acts as flag-bearer, carrying the regimental colors.

  24 chapters · About 200 minutes of published text

• The Reign of Greed

  By José Rizal (translated by Charles E. Derbyshire)

  The sequel to Rizal's Noli Me Tangere follows Simoun, a wealthy jeweller who returns to the Spanish Philippines with a plan. Charles Derbyshire's translation of a 1891 nationalist novel.

  39 chapters · About 493 minutes of published text

• The Return of Sherlock Holmes

  By Arthur Conan Doyle

  The Return of Sherlock Holmes is a 1905 collection of 13 Sherlock Holmes stories, originally published in 1903–1904, by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle. The stories were published in the Strand Magazine in Britain and Collier's in the United States.

  13 chapters · About 487 minutes of published text

• The Riddle of the Sands

  By Erskine Childers

  The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service is a 1903 novel by Erskine Childers. The book, which enjoyed immense popularity in the years before World War I, is an early example of the espionage novel and was extremely influential in the genre of spy fiction. It has been made into feature-length films for both cinema and television.

  28 chapters · About 467 minutes of published text

• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

  By Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  A sailor stops a wedding guest to tell how, becalmed on a polar sea, he killed the albatross that had guided his ship, and how his shipmates died and the dead men rose to work the rigging. The poem is in seven parts and ends on the moral that he prayeth best who loveth best.

  7 chapters · About 17 minutes of published text

• The Rivals

  By Richard Brinsley Sheridan

  Captain Absolute woos the romantic Lydia Languish while pretending to be a penniless ensign, and finds his own father promising him to her, so that he has to court her in both identities. The play also gave English the word malapropism, in the speeches of Mrs Malaprop.

  7 chapters · About 115 minutes of published text

• The Romance of Tristan and Iseult

  By Joseph Bédier (translated by Hilaire Belloc)

  Joseph Bédier's French retelling of the legend of Tristan, the knight, and Iseult, the queen, bound by a potion. Hilaire Belloc's translation keeps the old tale's direct and sorrowful voice.

  15 chapters · About 111 minutes of published text

• The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

  By Omar Khayyam (translated by Edward FitzGerald)

  Edward FitzGerald's free English version of the Persian astronomer's quatrains, with its wine, its roses and the Moving Finger that writes and moves on, became one of the most quoted poems of Victorian England. This edition prints the first and fifth versions, one after the other.

  2 chapters · About 24 minutes of published text

• The Scarlet Letter

  By Nathaniel Hawthorne

  The Scarlet Letter: A Romance is a historical novel by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1850. Set in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony during the years 1642 to 1649, the novel tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter with a man to whom she is not married and then struggles to lead a new life of repentance and dignity. As punishment, she must wear a scarlet letter 'A' (for "adultery"). Containing a number of religious and historic allusions, the book explores themes of legalism, sin, and guilt.

  23 chapters · About 294 minutes of published text

• The Scarlet Pimpernel

  By Baroness Orczy

  The Scarlet Pimpernel is the first novel in a series of historical fiction novels by British author Baroness Orczy, published in 1905. It was written after her stage play of the same title (co-authored with her husband Montagu Barstow) enjoyed a long run in London, having opened in Nottingham in 1903.

  31 chapters · About 372 minutes of published text

• The School for Scandal

  By Richard Brinsley Sheridan

  Lady Sneerwell and her circle trade in malicious gossip, and the hypocritical Joseph Surface schemes against his generous, spendthrift brother Charles for the hand of a rich ward. The return of their wealthy uncle Sir Oliver, in disguise, tests both nephews, and the famous screen scene brings the lies down.

  6 chapters · About 117 minutes of published text

• The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale

  By Joseph Conrad

  The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale is an anarchist spy fiction novel by Polish–British author Joseph Conrad, first "printed (1905–1906) as eleven installments in Ridgway's" and published in book form on 12 September 1907. The story is set in Soho, London in 1886 and deals with Mr. Adolf Verloc and his work as a spy for an unnamed country (presumably Russia). The Secret Agent is one of Conrad's later political novels in which he moved away from his tales of seafaring. The novel is dedicated to H. G. Wells and deals broadly with anarchism, espionage and terrorism.

  13 chapters · About 392 minutes of published text

• The Secret Garden

  By Frances Hodgson Burnett

  The Secret Garden is a children's novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett first published in book form in 1911, after serialisation in The American Magazine (November 1910 – August 1911). Set in England, it is seen as a classic of English children's literature. The American edition was published by the Frederick A. Stokes Company with illustrations by M. L. Kirk, and the British edition by Heinemann with illustrations by Charles Robinson. Several stage and film adaptations have been made of The Secret Garden.

  27 chapters · About 349 minutes of published text

• The secret of Father Brown

  By G. K. Chesterton

  G. K. Chesterton's last Father Brown collection, published in 1927, gathers the priest-detective's later cases. A reader finds him in mellow form, with more of the moral fable than the puzzle.

  9 chapters · About 260 minutes of published text