Bookshelf
British Literature
9,907 free books on the British Literature bookshelf, free to read online. Chapter 1 of any book is free, no account needed.
ReadThe Return of Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
The Return of Sherlock Holmes is a late‑Victorian detective narrative that picks up a decade after the famed…
ReadBleak House
Charles Dickens
Bleak House is a sprawling Victorian novel that begins amid a relentless rainstorm on the desolate estate of…
Forest Days: A Romance of Old Times
G. P. R. James
Forest Days: A Romance of Old Times is a historical adventure set in the shadow of Sherwood Forest during the…
ReadThe Passionate Elopement
Compton MacKenzie
The work is a comic, socially satirical novel set in eighteenth‑century England, where the author foregrounds…
The Yeoman Adventurer
George W. Gough
The Yeoman Adventurer is a swash‑swashing tale set against the backdrop of the 1745–1746 Jacobite Rebellion,…
ReadThe Boy with Wings
Berta Ruck
The novel is a wartime romance set against the flamboyant backdrop of an English artists’ ball in the early…
ReadThe complete works of John Gower, volume 2: The English works
John Gower
The volume presents the English portion of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis, a fifteenth‑century poem that…
ReadThe Man in the Brown Suit
Agatha Christie
The novel opens in a glittering theatre where the celebrated dancer Madame Nadina receives a fervent ovation…
ReadThe Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle
The work is a Sherlock Holmes memoir in which the famed detective and his chronicler, Dr.
ReadThe Mystery of Edwin Drood
Charles Dickens
The novel unfolds as a tangled tableau of Victorian intrigue, set against the looming stone tower of an…
Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I
Edmund Spenser
Spencer’s The Faerie Queene opens as an elaborate allegorical quest, introducing a “Gentle Knight” clad in…
ReadDubliners
James Joyce
James Joyce’s Dubliners is a collection of short stories that paints a vivid portrait of everyday life in the…
ReadThe Mysterious Affair at Styles
Agatha Christie
The opening places the novel squarely in the tradition of British detective fiction, introducing a narrator…
ReadThe Jungle Book
Rudyard Kipling
The work is a collection of short stories set in the Indian jungle, populated by animals that speak and act…
Emma
Jane Austen
Emma Woodhouse is introduced as a handsome, clever, and wealthy young woman whose life has been marked by…
Le Morte d'Arthur: Volume 1
Sir Thomas Malory
Le Morte d’Arthur is Thomas Malory’s monumental compilation of Arthurian romances, presented in twenty‑one…
The Gay Adventure: A Romance
Richard Bird
The Gay Adventure: A Romance is a whimsical, episodic tale that begins with a restless young man named Tony…
Doctor Cupid: A Novel
Rhoda Broughton
Doctor Cupid is a comic novel by Welsh author Rhoda Broughton, first published in 1891.
ReadLorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor
R. D. Blackmore
The novel is a historical romance set against the rugged backdrop of Exmoor in the late seventeenth century,…
ReadWhose Body? A Lord Peter Wimsey Novel
Dorothy L. Sayers
Whose Body? is a detective novel that places its famed amateur sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, at the centre of a…
ReadA Little English Gallery
Louise Imogen Guiney
A Little English Gallery is a biographical sketchbook that gathers together brief portraits of notable…
ReadSongs of Innocence and of Experience
William Blake
William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience is a collection of lyrical poems that juxtaposes the…
Roméo et Juliette Tragédie
William Shakespeare
Cette œuvre est une tragédie dramatique qui se déploie dès le début dans le décor animé d’un carnaval de…
Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens
The novel opens in a bleak, unnamed town where a workhouse, “anciently common to most towns”, cradles the…