Correspondence and speeches saved because someone thought the sentences should outlive the postage. Public-domain collections only; reading is on Open Library.
Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address was delivered as part of his taking of the oath of office for his first term as the sixteenth president of the United States. The speech, delivered at the United States Capitol, was primarily addressed to the people of the South and was intended to succinctly state Lincoln's intended policies and desires toward that section, where seven states had seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America.
The Communist Manifesto, originally the Manifesto of the Communist Party, is a political pamphlet written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto was commissioned by the Communist League and published in London.
Writing in clear and persuasive prose, Paine collected moral and political arguments to encourage common people in the Colonies to fight for egalitarian government. Common Sense was published anonymously at the beginning of the American Revolution and became an immediate sensation.
Daddy-Long-Legs stays with the protagonist, Jerusha "Judy" Abbott, as she leaves an orphanage and is sent to college by a benefactor whom she has never seen. Daddy-Long-Legs was initially serialized in the April–September issues of the Ladies' Home Journal, and first published in book form by The Century Company.
The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow was the author’s second published book and it helped establish him as a leading English humorist. While widely considered one of Jerome’s better works, and in spite of using the same style as Three Men in a Boat, it was never as popular as the latter.
De Profundis (Latin: "from the depths") is a letter written by Oscar Wilde during his imprisonment in Reading Gaol, to his friend and lover Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas. In its first half, Wilde recounts their previous relationship and extravagant lifestyle which resulted eventually in Wilde's conviction and imprisonment for gross indecency.
The papers themselves came to be known collectively as the Federalist Papers beginning in the nineteenth century. The first seventy-seven of these essays were published serially in the Independent Journal, the New York Packet, and the Daily Advertiser between October and April.
Is Shakespeare Dead? From My Autobiography explores the controversy over the authorship of the Shakespearean literary canon via satire, anecdote, and extensive quotation of contemporary authors on the subject.
The relation of literature to life -- Simplicity -- "Equality"--What is your culture to me? -- Modern fiction -- Thoughts suggested by Mr. Froude's "Progress"--England -- The English volunteers during the late invasion -- The novel and the common school -- A night in the garden of the Tuileries.
Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences draws on examples from The Deerslayer and The Pathfinder from Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. The essay is characteristic of Twain's biting, derisive, and highly satirical style of literary criticism, a form he also used to deride such authors as Oliver Goldsmith, George Eliot, Jane Austen, and Robert Louis Stevenson.
Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism is a series of periodical essays by Matthew Arnold, first published in Cornhill Magazine –68 and collected as a book. Arnold's famous piece of writing on culture established his High Victorian cultural agenda which remained dominant in debate from the 1860s until the 1950s.
The Biographia Literaria ('literary biography') is a critical autobiography by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, published two volumes. Its working title was 'Autobiographia Literaria'.
Italian Hours collected essays that James had written over nearly forty years about a country he knew and loved well. James extensively revised and sometimes expanded the essays to create a more consistent whole.
An Essay on Criticism is one of the first major poems written by the English writer Alexander Pope (1688–1744), published. An Essay on Criticism is the source of the famous quotations "To err is human; to forgive, divine", "A little learning is a dang'rous thing" (frequently paraphrased as "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing"), and "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread".
The Harvard Classics, originally marketed as Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf of Books, is a 50-volume series of classic works of world literature, important speeches, and historical documents compiled and edited by Harvard University President Charles W.
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions; Together with Death's Duel covers death, rebirth and the early modern concept of sickness as a visit from God, reflecting internal sinfulness. The Devotions were written in December as Donne recovered from a serious but unknown illness – believed to be relapsing fever or typhus.
Past and Present Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works was published in April in England and the following month in the United States. Past and Present Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works combines medieval history with criticism of 19th-century British society.
Mill submitted the finished manuscript of their collaborative work On Liberty soon after her untimely death in late, and then continued work on The Subjection of Women until its completion. Harriet Taylor Mill wrote an earlier essay The Enfranchisement of Women, published under her own name in The Westminster Review, which covered much of the same ground, and seems to use similar language for many of its arguments.
In Praise of Folly Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts: in Praise of Folly, also translated as The Praise of Folly (Latin: Stultitiae Laus or Moriae Encomium), is an oration written in Latin by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam and first printed in June.
The Communist Manifesto, originally the Manifesto of the Communist Party, is a political pamphlet written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Manifesto of the Communist Party was commissioned by the Communist League and published in London.
Patrick Lafcadio Hearn was a Greek and Irish writer, translator, and teacher whose work played a significant role in the introduction of the culture and literature of Japan to the mainstream Western world.
The yellow book, an illustrated quarterly. Was published at The Bodley Head Publishing House by Elkin Mathews and John Lane, and later by John Lane alone, and edited by the American Henry Harland. The periodical was priced at 5 shillings.
English Hours collected various essays James had written on England over a period of more than thirty years, beginning in the 1870s. The essays had originally appeared in such periodicals as The Nation, The Century Magazine, Scribner's Magazine, The Galaxy and Lippincott's Magazine.
A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke; Occasioned by His Reflections on the Revolution in France is a political pamphlet, written by the 18th-century British writer and women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft, which attacks aristocracy and advocates republicanism.
The Red Man's Rebuke, later titled The Red Man's Greeting, was an essay written by Simon Pokagon (Potowatomi, c. 1830–1899) which he distributed to those attending the World's Columbian Exposition. The Red Man's Rebuke was published in the form of a sixteen-page, palm-sized birch bark booklet, of which an unknown number of copies were distributed.
