Unknown to History: a story of the captivity of Mary of Scotland -by Charlotte Mary Yonge

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

Unknown to History: a story of the captivity of Mary of Scotland is an unwieldy title for a novel.  Yes, this is historical fiction not history and we have it straight from the author:

" . . . it must be remembered that the art of the story-teller makes it needful to curtail some of the incidents which would render the narrative too complicated to be interesting to those who wish more for a view of noted characters in remarkable situations, than for a minute and accurate sifting of facts and evidence."

The author, Charlotte Mary Yonge, was a very popular English novelist and the book dates from 1882.(US Edition)  (UK Edition) 

So, how well does she succeed?  The novel begins with a baby saved from a shipwreck!  Always a good start . . . a mysterious infant.

"The token was a small gold cross, of peculiar workmanship, with a crystal in the middle, through which might be seen some mysterious object neither husband nor wife could make out, but which they agreed must be carefully preserved for the identification of their little waif. Mrs. Talbot also produced a strip of writing which she had found sewn to the inmost band wrapped round the little body, but it had no superscription, and she believed it to be either French, Latin, or High Dutch, for she could make nothing of it. Indeed, the good lady's education had only included reading, writing, needlework and cookery, and she knew no language but her own."

And then there is the drama surrounding Mary Queen of Scots and her followers:

In fact, Richard suspected him of being somewhat flattered by being the cause of such a commotion, and actually accused of so grand and manly a crime as high treason. The Earl could extract no word, and finally sentenced him to remain at Bridgefield, shut up in his own chamber till he could be dealt with. The lad walked away in a dignified manner, and the Earl, holding up his hands, half amused, half vexed, said, "So the spell is on that poor lad likewise. What shall I do with him? An orphan boy too, and mine old friend's son."

Hers is a sad story that has never failed to interest over the centuries.

 

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

Cecelia, or, Memoirs of an Heiress - by Fanny Burney

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

Cecelia is a 1782 novel by British author Fanny Burney. (US Edition)  (UK Edition)   This book was read by Jane Austen and  Austen found the title for "Pride and Prejudice" in this work.  The novel is in five volumes and this is volume one.  You will be able to find the other volumes if volume one hooks you.  As classic book readers know, what we would put in one book, early novelists put in more than one volume.

Now you know are in for fun right at the beginning:

He knew that the acquaintance of Cecilia was confined to a circle of which he was himself the principal ornament, that she had rejected all the proposals of marriage which had hitherto been made to her, and, as he had sedulously watched her from her earliest years, he had reason to believe that her heart had escaped any dangerous impression. This being her situation, he had long looked upon her as his future property; as such he had indulged his admiration, and as such he had already appropriated her estate, though he had not more vigilantly inspected into her sentiments, than he had guarded his own from a similar scrutiny.

Everyone loves an heiress!

Well, not quite everyone . . .

Lady Margaret received her with a coldness that bordered upon incivility; irascible by nature and jealous by situation, the appearance of beauty alarmed, and of chearfulness disgusted her. She regarded with watchful suspicion whoever was addressed by her husband, and having marked his frequent attendance at the Deanery, she had singled out Cecilia for the object of her peculiar antipathy; while Cecilia, perceiving her aversion though ignorant of its cause, took care to avoid all intercourse with her but what ceremony exacted, and pitied in secret the unfortunate lot of her friend.

There is nothing wrong with being an "early" novelist.  Austen, who is the favorite of many, is an early novelist.  Of course that early playwright, Shakespeare, has yet to be equaled, let alone surpassed.  As we fans of classic novels know,  the books we read are not only entertaining, they can be as current on the state of the human spirit as anything written yesterday and uploaded this morning.

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

Can You Forgive Her - by Anthony Trollope

 US/UK Kindle Classic

"Can You Forgive Her" is an 1864 novel by British writer Anthony Trollope.  This is the first novel in the Palliser Series,  known as Trollope's "political series."  Trollope was and is a popular novelist.  He is by no means forgotten.  Typically there are 4 or 5 volumes in a series and they are all self-contained.  This is, of course, the first in the series.  (US Edition)  (£1.29 UK Edition)

Searching AmazonUS for a free version of this book took three tries before the free version was listed.  I don't know why that would be, but doing this blog has taught me that the free version rarely pops up first if someone has loaded a version for sale.

I really like Trollope.  The individual novels are not long, but the series is a satisfying length.  Many of his works have been adapted for movies or television.  The Pallisers had a particularly successful television adaption by British author, Simon Raven.

Let's take a look. 

I cannot say that the house in Queen Anne Street was a pleasant house. I am now speaking of the material house, made up of the walls and furniture, and not of any pleasantness or unpleasantness supplied by the inmates. It was a small house on the south side of the street, squeezed in between two large mansions which seemed to crush it, and by which its fair proportion of doorstep and area was in truth curtailed. The stairs were narrow; the dining-room was dark, and possessed none of those appearances of plenteous hospitality which a dining-room should have. But all this would have been as nothing if the drawing-room had been pretty as it is the bounden duty of all drawing-rooms to be. But Alice Vavasor's drawing-room was not pretty.

So you see the novel is concerned with the mundane as well as Parliament.  Of course that is not the only House in this novel.  

  

Trollope writes about people and if you understand people, your work is never out of date.

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - by Harriet Jacobs

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

Harriet Jacobs’ memoir, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, is one of the few American slave narratives by a woman and apparently is a very vivid and honest account – ahead of its time in its frankness.  (US Edition)  (UK Edition)  This book is part memoir and part explanation of what slave life is like.

Here is an account from Harriet’s slave life:

Little attention was paid to the slaves’ meals in Dr. Flint’s house. If they could catch a bit of food while it was going, well and good. I gave myself no trouble on that score, for on my various errands I passed my grandmother’s house, where there was always something to spare for me. I was frequently threatened with punishment if I stopped there; and my grandmother, to avoid detaining me, often stood at the gate with something for my breakfast or dinner. I was indebted to her for all my comforts, spiritual or temporal.

It was her labor that supplied my scanty wardrobe. I have a vivid recollection of the linsey-woolsey dress given me every winter by Mrs. Flint. How I hated it! It was one of the badges of slavery.

While my grandmother was thus helping to support me from her hard earnings, the three hundred dollars she had lent her mistress were never repaid. When her mistress died, her son-in-law, Dr. Flint, was appointed executor. When grandmother applied to him for payment, he said the estate was insolvent, and the law prohibited payment. It did not, however, prohibit him from retaining the silver candelabra, which had been purchased with that money. I presume they will be handed down in the family, from generation to generation.

My grandmother’s mistress had always promised her that, at her death, she should be free; and it was said that in her will she made good the promise. But when the estate was settled, Dr. Flint told the faithful old servant that, under existing circumstances, it was necessary she should be sold.”

Here is a bit of the frankness, which is her attempt to educate on the realities of life for slaves and slaveholders:

The slaveholder’s sons are, of course, vitiated, even while boys, by the unclean influences every where around them. Nor do the master’s daughters always escape. Severe retributions sometimes come upon him for the wrongs he does to the daughters of the slaves. The white daughters early hear their parents quarrelling about some female slave. Their curiosity is excited, and they soon learn the cause. They are attended by the young slave girls whom their father has corrupted; and they hear such talk as should never meet youthful ears, or any other ears. They know that the woman slaves are subject to their father’s authority in all things; and in some cases they exercise the same authority over the men slaves. I have myself seen the master of such a household whose head was bowed down in shame; for it was known in the neighborhood that his daughter had selected one of the meanest slaves on his plantation to be the father of his first grandchild. She did not make her advances to her equals, nor even to her father’s more intelligent servants. She selected the most brutalized, over whom her authority could be exercised with less fear of exposure. Her father, half frantic with rage, sought to revenge himself on the offending black man; but his daughter, foreseeing the storm that would arise, had given him free papers, and sent him out of the state.

In such cases the infant is smothered, or sent where it is never seen by any who know its history. But if the white parent is the father, instead of the mother, the offspring are unblushingly reared for the market. If they are girls, I have indicated plainly enough what will be their inevitable destiny.

During this sesquicentennial of the American Civil War, as we mark the anniversaries of the battles, we are lucky to be able to travel back in time and hear from a rare voice that was not silenced.

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.

The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells

The Rise of Silas Lapham is an 1884 novel by William Dean Howells, who is considered to be the father of American Realism. Which I would guess meant it took until 1884 before we started telling the truth in novels!   (US Edition)  (£1.02 UK Edition) 

Here is an AmazonUK Reader Review:

"I am sure that most people who read this book will do so because they are studying 19th century American fiction. But I would also recommend this to others for three reasons.Firstly, and most importantly for a satire, this is actually quite a funny novel. Secondly, the targets of its satire are diverse and still relevant today: class and status, the price to be paid both by society and individuals for economic progress, the value systems of capitalism."

I found this Reader Review on AmazonUS:

"I found that this novel, although it is about Boston in 1885 or so, a period more than 130 years ago, it is human, engrossing and ultimately moving. I found myself really drawn into the lives of the Lapham family and that of Tom Corey. Although what motivates them is dictated by what to me is a foreign culture (foreign by virtue of its remove in time) it seems psychologically sound."

Here is what the book has to say for itself!

Bartley hid a yawn over his note-book, and probably, if he could have spoken his mind, he would have suggested to Lapham that he was not there for the purpose of interviewing his ancestry. But Bartley had learned to practise a patience with his victims which he did not always feel, and to feign an interest in their digressions till he could bring them up with a round turn.

"I tell you," said Lapham, jabbing the point of his penknife into the writing-pad on the desk before him, "when I hear women complaining nowadays that their lives are stunted and empty, I want to tell 'em about my MOTHER'S life. I could paint it out for 'em."

I am guessing Barney will find a story to tell!

 

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers

The Wreckers -by Francis Lynde

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

The Wreckers is a 1920 railroad novel by American author, Francis Lynde. (US Edition)  (UK Edition)  I call this a railroad novel, because there seems to have briefly been a genre that catered to those readers fascinated with all things railroad. 

Just an aside here to UK Kindle readers.  When I searched for this book under Kindle books on Amazon UK, an inexpensive version appeared - as if it were the only Kindle edition on offer.  Under the book was a bar and books were listed from other departments - including this free Kindle edition!  On both Amazon and Amazon UK, you sometimes have to dig to find the free Kindle version.

It was this way. We had finished the construction work on the Oregon Midland; had quit, cleaned up the offices, drawn our last pay-checks, told everybody good-by, and were on our way to the train, when I had one of those queer little premonitory chills you hear so much about and knew just as well as could be that we were never going to pull through to Chicago without getting a jolt of some sort. The reason—if you'll call it a reason—was that, just before we came to the railroad station, the boss walked calmly under a ladder standing in front of a new building; and besides that, it was the thirteenth day of the month, a Friday, and raining like the very mischief.

So this is a book that does not take itself too seriously.   Nevertheless, the early chapters are ambitious enough to include bandits, kidnapping and romance.

It all sounds pretty old fashioned until you stumble across this:

Stock gambling, under whatever name it masquerades—boosting values, buying and selling margins, reorganizations, with their huge rake-offs for the underwriters—is the incubus which is crushing the life out of the nation's industries, especially in the railroad field. It makes me wish I'd never seen a railroad track."

In a lot of ways our times are like the pre-WW I era through the Great Depression.  I am not saying it is an exact fit, but our economy has more in common with those boom and bust decades than it does with the post WWII prosperity of our parents and grandparents.  So novels of this time are not always as far removed as you might think.

For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers.