The first Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women met in New York City in May, 1837. Members at the Convention came from all walks of life and included such prominent women as Mary Parker, Lucretia Mott, the Grimke sisters, and Lydia Maria Child. One outcome of this important event was a statement of the organization’s role in the abolitionist movement as expressed in AN ADDRESS TO FREE COLORED AMERICANS, which begins: “The sympathy we feel for our oppressed fellow-citizens who are enslaved...

A collection of short nonfiction works in the public domain. The selections included in this collection were independently chosen by the readers, and the topics encompass history, slavery, science, education, humor, philosophy, nature and baseball.

Lafcadio Hearn, born 1850 in Greece, went to Japan when he was 40 years old and became a Japanese citizen only 6 years later. His writings about Japan from the beginning of the Meiji era, when the country was just opening to the West, remain among the most important explanations of Japanese culture. This book contains in the first part, "Exotics", his observations of and personal insights into Japan. For example, Fuji no Yama tells about him climbing the highest mountain in Japan; and A Question in the Zen Texts, Literature of the Dead, and Of Moon Desire try to explain Buddhist teachings...

Fifteen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include the Faust Legend, Stephen Crane, Sundials and the Statue of Liberty.

Best remembered for his poetry, James Elroy Flecker was also a playwright, novelist and prose writer. This collection of his idiosyncratic prose writings includes The Last Generation (a short science fiction story), short sketches, a dialogue, and several critical studies.

"We would no more choose to feed the minds of our countrymen and women with the despairing utterances of the pessimist poet, than we would their bodies with hasheesh. Such melancholy as his clothed in such eloquent words may be the luxury of the idle; it is poison to those who have work to do in the world. It shuts out hope, the very spring of energy; it makes the cheerful steady pursuit of duty a thing utterly beyond human powers. For we can none of us stand alone. Either in human or divine love we must find the mainspring of all life worth living...

A biographical encomium delivered on the occasion of Roosevelt's death. Theodore "T.R." Roosevelt, Jr. (1858 – 1919) was an American author, naturalist, explorer, historian, and politician who served as the 26th President of the United States. He was a leader of the Republican Party (the "GOP") and founder of the Progressive Party. He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

Eighteen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include how to swim, Navajo silversmithing, the sun, begonias and ferns, Martin Luther, U.S. Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, Captain Cook's exploration of Botany Bay, General James Wolfe, and Moravian missionaries in Labrador.

"Among the personalities of the early Roman Empire there are few who offer to the readers of to-day such dramatic interest as does Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the author of the Epistles which are translated in this volume. ... In these letters, it is impossible to ignore the advance from a somewhat stiff and Ciceronian point of view into the attractive and debatable land of what one may fairly call modern ideas. The style of the Epistles is bold, and so is the thought." (from the Introduction)

A controversial lecturer and famous orator of the mid 1800's, Ingersoll railed against the absurdities of the Bible and cruelties of orthodox Christianity, tirelessly supported the arts, education, science, women’s rights, abolition, home, family, children, and human liberty, whose creed was: “Happiness is the only good, Reason the only torch, Justice the only worship, Humanity the only religion, and Love the only priest.” He was often attacked from the pulpit and in the press. Here are 30 more published interviews (from among hundreds), in which Ingersoll spoke extemporaneously, bitingly, sometimes hilariously, on a wide range of topics, with newspaper reporters of the day...

This is a volume of selected essays by "the great master of reason" Samuel Johnson. The most famous exerpts from The Rambler, The Adventurer and The Idler are included, covering a vast range of topics.

This is a collection of essays, edited by Booker T. Washington, representative of what historians have characterized as "racial uplift ideology." These and other similar narratives of the time were a reaction to the gradual erosion of the African-American's civil rights across the United States that began during Reconstruction.

Herbert Giles was in the diplomatic service in China from 1867 to 1893. His frank observations on Chinese culture and people form the basis of these short essays, published in 1876. On his retirement, he returned to England and served as the Chair of Chinese at Cambridge for 35 years.

Eighteen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include literary figures--Alice Mangold Diehl, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Arthur Hugh Clough; philosophers--Hegel, Kierkegaard; religious thinkers--Martin Luther, Cotton Mather; political leaders--Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy; important documents--the Constitution of Japan (1946), the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom; moments in history--the Battle of the Crater, the Dred Scott Decision; historical figures--the Pseudo Dionysius and Xenophon; and, lastly, shopper's tips for watermelons and cantaloupes.

Selections from the varied writings of a 17th century English doctor with a well-stocked mind, an interest in the new science of his age and a deep religious faith. His prose is famous for its Baroque complexity and its frequent eloquence. Sir Thomas endowed English with numerous quotations and was a notable coiner of words, many of which are still in common use.

As a teenager, Benjamin Franklin apprenticed with his brother James at the shop where The New-England Courant was printed. Since James would not publish any of Benjamin's works, fifteen-year-old Benjamin sent letters to The New England Courant under the pseudonym Silence Dogood. A total of fourteen letters were sent, one each fortnight, between April and December of 1722. (Introduction by Darcy Smittenaar)

The Moralia (or The morals or Matters relating to customs and mores) is a work by the 1st-century Greek scholar Plutarch of Chaeronea. It is a collection of 78 essays and transcribed speeches that give an insight into Roman and Greek life. Extremely popular for centuries, Plutarch's Morals have been read and imitated by many generations of Europeans, including Montaigne and the Renaissance Humanists and Enlightenment philosophers. Some of the most famous chapters on history are "On the Fortune or...

A collection of wry looks at literature, education, and other social phenomena by Canadian humourist and economics professor, Stephen Leacock.

A collection of short nonfiction works in the public domain. The selections included in this collection were independently chosen by the readers and include speeches and essays on history, science, politics, nature, travel, psychology and love.

Collection of 32 essays by American authors ranging from Benjamin Frannklin to Emerson to Whitman to Henry James to Theodore Roosevelt. On subjects from the gout to insects with a 24 hour life span to old bachelors to leaves of grass to the odes of Horace. It seems to be an attempt to show off the Americans as writers.

The value of the honey bee in cross pollinating the flowers of fruit trees makes it desirable that exact information be available concerning the actions of the bee when gathering and manipulating the pollen. The results recorded in this manuscript are also of value as studies in the behavior of the bee and will prove interesting and valuable to the bee keeper. The work here recorded was done by Dr. Casteel during the summers of 1911 and 1912.

THE SPIRIT OF AMERICAN LITERATURE is a collection of essays reviewing contemporary authors on the literary scene at the turn of the century and assessing the uniquely American characteristics of their growing body of work. Excerpted from the author’s preface: “In this book something is said about most, if not quite all, of the emergent figures in American literature; an attempt is made to survey the four corners of the national library and to give an impression of its shape and size. If its purpose is approximately realized, this volume will be found to be a little nearer to a collection of appreciative essays than to a formal history or bibliographic manual...

Volume 1 contains these 12 essays: 1.) "Americans on a Visit to the Emperor of Russia." 2.) "The Austrian Edison keeping school again" 3.) "The Canvasser's tale." 4.) "The Czar's Soliloquy." 5.) "English as She is Taught." 6.) "Grasses in the South." 7.) "Hawaii." 8.) "A Helpless Situation." 9.) "How I Escaped being Killed in a Duel." 10.) "Important to Whom it may Concern." 11.) "The Austrian Edison Keeping School Again" 12.) "Jim's Investments, and King Sollermun."

Twenty short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include architecture, education, philosophy, religion, health, humor, history, and literature.

A look at the year 1891 through literature and non-fiction essays first published that year, including works by Mary E Wilkins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sara Orne Jewett, and Oscar Wilde.

Twenty short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include botany, dreams, farming, history, literature, nature, and religion.

This essay of a cultured observer, for many years United States consul in Rome, appeared in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol 10, issue 59, April, 1855, pp 577 - 600.

Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, one of the greatest orators of the mid-19th century, was a highly sought after lecturer/toastmaster who sold out every hall he engaged throughout America. He was an ardent abolitionist, agnostic, humanist, humanitarian, supporter of the arts, and woman's rights, and member of the Unitarian Church, who railed against the absurdities of the Bible and cruelties of Christianity, praised technology, inventors, authors and great statemen for their contributions to the uplift of mankind...

Eighteen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include astronomy, religion, United States history, football, child raising, Tokyo firebombing, and more.

Eighteen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include the English countryside; William Randolph Hearst and journalism; the philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard, John Dewey and others; General William T. Sherman's voyage to San Francisco; the metric system, and the future of the machine age. Bjornson's "Beyond Human Power" and Kierkegaard's "What Says the Fire Marshal?" were both translated by Lee Milton HollanderThe translators of Philemon's "The Highest Good" and Lessing's "On Love of Truth" are unknown.

On 15th June 1215 the Magna Carta was sealed under oath by King John at Runnymede, on the bank of the River Thames near Windsor, England. 2015 is the 800th anniversary of this charter, which led eventually to the rule of constitutional law in England and beyond. This book of essays on various aspects of the Charter was written by distinguished academics for the Royal Historical Society to commemorate the 700th anniversary of Magna Carta. N. B. The readers in this project are not scholars of mediaeval Latin or French. Where there are passages or phrases of Latin and Old French, we have endeavoured to make them clear, but make no claim to authentic pronunciation.

Eighteen short nonfiction works in the public domain, independently chosen by the readers. Topics include the discovery of X-rays, earthquakes, Hegel, Sir William Osler, Charles William Eliot, Oscar Wilde, Charles Sumner, Monica Lewinsky, and Anita Loos; the Lincoln highway, joys of gardening, goldfish, skunk raising, and the cultivation of tobacco. "Earthquakes" was co-authored by Louis Pakiser.