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By: Wright, Orville and Wilbur (1871-1948 / 1867-1912) | |
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The Early History of the Airplane
The Brothers Orville (1871 - 1948) and Wilbur (1867 – 1912) Wright made the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air flight, on 17th December 1903. They were not the first to build and fly aircraft, but they invented the controls that were necessary for a pilot to steer the aircraft, which made fixed wing powered flight possible. The Early History of the Airplane consists of three short essays about the beginnings of human flight. The second essay retells the first flight: "This... |
By: Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) | |
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Autocrat of the Breakfast Table |
By: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894) | |
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My Hunt After 'The Captain'
Holmes describes his frantic search through Civil War torn landscapes for his wounded son, the future Supreme Court Justice. Originally published in The Atlantic Magazine, 1862. Holmes, Sr. (1809 -1894) was an American physician, poet, professor, lecturer, and author. He was regarded by his peers as one of the best writers of the 19th century. His most famous prose works are the "Breakfast Table" series, which began with The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858). He is also recognized as an important medical reformer. | |
By: Oliver Lodge (1851-1940) | |
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Pioneers of Science
This book takes its origin in a course of lectures on the history and progress of Astronomy arranged for Sir Oliver Lodge in the year 1887. The first part of this book is devoted to the biographies and discoveries of well known astronomers like Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, Galileo and Newton. In the second part, the biographies take a back seat, while scientific discoveries are discussed more extensively, like the discovery of Asteroids and Neptune, a treatise on the tides and others. |
By: Olive Schreiner (1855-1920) | |
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Dream Life and Real Life; a little African story |
By: Hamilton Wright Mabie (1846-1916) | |
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Essays on Work and Culture
The author investigates the world of work against a backdrop of culture. Each of the 25 essays focuses on one aspect of the topic. For example, the first essay, "Tool or Man?" looks at two views of man. One is that of strength as the provider of security. The other is that of aesthete, as an enthusiast of the arts or academics or religion. In our culture, provider of security is the winner every time. Man as a source of multiple talents cannot be allowed. As the author frames the argument, "Specialisation has been carried so far that it has become an organised tyranny... | |
Under the Trees and Elsewhere |
By: Joseph Addison (1672-1719) | |
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Essays and Tales |
By: Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay (1800-1859) | |
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The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay Complete Table of Contents of the Four Volumes | |
Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches | |
Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 3 |
By: Edmund Burke (1729-1797) | |
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Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke |
By: George Morang (1866-1937) | |
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The Copyright Question
This is a letter to the Toronto Board of Trade regarding Canadian copyrights. Morang requested an appearance before the Toronto Board of Trade but was denied. This is his letter in response. He wished to make clear his position. |
By: Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) | |
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Mintage
Elbert Hubbard is best known as the author of the "Little Journeys To The Homes of Famous People". These 11 short stores show the side of him that celebrated caring, friendship love among humans. The first describes how 5 frightened orphan children from a foreign country were cared for on a railroad journey of a thousand miles; all by strangers without any planning and without a word of English being spoken or needed. He observed caring human men and women of all ages doing whatever was necessary to see they reached their destination in whatever comfort could be provided... |
By: Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) | |
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Southern Horrors: Lynch Law In All Its Phases
Thoroughly appalled and sickened by the rising numbers of white-on-black murders in the South since the beginning of Reconstruction, and by the unwillingness of local, state and federal governments to prosecute those who were responsible, Ida Bell Wells-Barnett wrote Southern Horrors, a pamphlet in which she exposed the horrible reality of lynchings to the rest of the nation and to the world. Wells explained, through case study, how the federal government's failure to intervene allowed Southern states... |
By: Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) | |
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Sketches |
By: editor: Frank Munsey | |
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The Scrap Book Sampler
18 works -- two non-fic articles & one short fiction or poetry each -- from issues March, April, May, June, July, & August 1906 of The Scrap Book, Volume 1, edited by Frank Munsey. As he states in the editorial of the April 1906 issue (Vol 1, Iss 2) this was a sort of supplement to the editor's popular monthly, Munsey's Magazine. The Scrap Book is very like an American version of Punch with many short, often humorous articles interspersed with at least one short story, some poetry, and several longer non-fic pieces. The Scrap Book ran up to 1922. |
By: Pictorial Photographers of America | |
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Pictorial Photography in America 1920 | |
Pictorial Photography in America 1922 | |
Pictorial Photography in America 1921 |
By: John Addington Symonds (1840-1893) | |
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A Problem in Modern Ethics
“Society lies under the spell of ancient terrorism and coagulated errors. Science is either wilfully hypocritical or radically misinformed.” John Addington Symonds struck many an heroic note in this courageous (albeit anonymously circulated) essay. He is a worthy Virgil guiding the reader through the Inferno of suffering which emerging medico-legal definitions of the sexually deviant were prepared to inflict on his century and on the one which followed. Symonds pleads for sane human values in... |
By: George Henry Borrow (1803-1881) | |
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Letters of George Borrow to the British and Foreign Bible Society |
By: William Cobbett (1763-1835) | |
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Rural Rides
William Cobbett: 1763-1835 English farmer, journalist and politician. His book Rural Rides collects together the articles published in his Political Register between 1822 and 1826, reflecting conditions of farmers and labourers in the English countryside, together with his views on the necessary actions for remedy and the shortcomings of government in this regard. Although this sounds amazingly dry, his forthright personality, original views and conversational tone, as well as the startling relevance of many of his topics to current political and social issues, give Rural Rides the immediacy and liveliness of a 19th century blog. |
By: Charles James Lever (1806-1872) | |
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Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General |
By: Bradford Torrey (1843-1912) | |
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A Florida Sketch-Book
This is a series of late-19th Century essays about Florida’s flora & fauna written by a Massachusetts-based naturalist. |
By: Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) | |
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The Buried Temple |
By: Louis Becke (1855-1913) | |
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The Beginning Of The Sea Story Of Australia 1901 | |
The South Seaman An Incident In The Sea Story Of Australia - 1901 | |
The Americans In The South Seas 1901 |
By: Douglas Fairbanks (1883-1939) | |
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Laugh and Live
Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. (May 23, 1883 – December 12, 1939) was an American actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films such as The Thief of Baghdad, Robin Hood, and The Mark of Zorro. His book, Laugh and Live, is a book about positive virtues and advice for leading a good, healthy, and successful life. An advisory about this book is in order. Published in 1917, it was written at a time when “men went to work, women kept house, and supported their man”... |
By: Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) | |
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Industrial Conspiracies |
By: Northern Nut Growers Association [Editor] | |
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Northern Nut Growers Association, report of the proceedings at the sixth annual meeting Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 |
By: William Hazlitt (1778-1830) | |
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Table Talk Essays on Men and Manners |
By: Vernon Lee (1856-1935) | |
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Hortus Vitae Essays on the Gardening of Life |
By: H. Bolingbroke Mudie (1880-1916) | |
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The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 1 | |
The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 4 | |
The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 3 | |
The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 5 | |
The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 2 |
By: Irvin S. Cobb (1876-1944) | |
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Cobb's Bill-of-Fare |
By: James Anthony Froude (1818-1894) | |
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Short Studies on Great Subjects |
By: John Fiske (1842-1901) | |
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The Unseen World and Other Essays |
By: Charles William Eliot (1834-1926) | |
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Harvard Classics Volume 28 Essays English and American |
By: Lord Redesdale (1837-1916) | |
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Tales of Old Japan
Tales of Old Japan by Lord Redesdale is a collection of short stories focusing on Japanese life of the Edo period (1603 - 1868). It contains a number of classic Japanese stories, fairy tales, and other folklore; as well as Japanese sermons and non-fiction pieces on special ceremonies in Japanese life, such as marriage and harakiri, as observed by Lord Redesdale. The best know story of these is "The Forty-seven Ronins" a true account of samurai revenge as it happened at the beginning of 18th century Japan... |
By: Agnes Repplier (1855-1950) | |
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Americans and Others
A collection of sometimes biting, always clever commentaries on some of life's foibles -- as apt today as when Ms. Repplier wrote them in 1912. Though less know to modern readers, Repplier was in her prime ranked among the likes of Willa Cather. Note: Section 13 contains the word niggards. I put it in print here so that it will not be mistaken for a racial epithet when heard. (written by Mary Schneider) |
By: Kate M. Foley | |
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Five Lectures on Blindness
The [five] lectures were written primarily to be delivered at the summer sessions of the University of California, at Berkeley and at Los Angeles, in the summer of 1918. . . they are the outgrowth of almost a quarter of a century spent in work for the blind, and were written from the standpoint of a blind person, seeking to better the condition of the blind. They were addressed not to the blind, but to the seeing public, for the benefit that will accrue to the blind from a better understanding of their problems. (Extract from the Forward by Milton J. Ferguson) |
By: Arthur Christopher Benson (1862-1925) | |
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At Large | |
Escape, and Other Essays | |
Joyous Gard | |
The Thread of Gold |
By: Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell (1847-1922) | |
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Essays |
By: Izaak Walton (1593-1683) | |
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The Compleat Angler
The Compleat Angler is a celebration of the art and spirit of fishing in prose and verse. Walton did not profess to be an expert with the fly, but in the use of the live worm, the grasshopper and the frog "Piscator" could speak as a master. There were originally only two interlocutors in the opening scene, "Piscator" and "Viator"; but in the second edition, as if in answer to an objection that "Piscator" had it too much in his own way in praise of angling, he introduced the falconer, "Auceps," changed "Viator" into "Venator" and made the new companions each dilate on the joys of his favourite sport. |