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Reading recommendations for fiction, nonfiction, and audiobooks across all reading levels.
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From the mysterious Druids and noble King Alfred to the notorious Henry VIII and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Charles Dickens traced his country's history for the benefit of young Victorians. Written with the beloved storyteller's customary panache, this series of historical vignettes reads like a fast-paced novel, rich in anecdotes and colorful stories. Dickens' unsparing, witty, and opinionated perspectives on the great pageant of English history...
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The Children of the New Forest (1847) is a novel by Frederick Marryat. Although Marryat is more widely known for novels inspired by his experience as a captain in the Royal Navy, The Children of the New Forest is a historical children's novel set in the aftermath of the English Civil War. Bringing his readers into the world of danger and political intrigue that was England in the 17th century, Marryat earns his place as one of the leading adventure...
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Project Gutenberg etext volume no. 369
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Edgar Rice Burroughs created one of the most iconic figures in American pop culture, Tarzan of the Apes, and it is impossible to overstate his influence on entire genres of popular literature in the decades after his enormously winning pulp novels stormed the public's imagination. The Outlaw of Torn, first published in 1927, is considered one of Burroughs' best adventure yarns, a Robin Hood-esque tale of the rescue of young Prince Richard, Henry III's...
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From the author of The Jungle Book comes a magical fantasy story, rich in historical detail and filled with intrigue and excitementUna and Dan, reciting Shakespeare on a summer's evening in rural Sussex, unwittingly summon the elf Puck. They are taken on a fantastic journey through Britain's past, their magical companion plucking from history an array of fascinating characters for them to meet: Parnesius, a Roman centurion who manned Hadrian's wall;...
5) Vanity Fair
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Appears on list
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A panoramic satire of English society during the Napoleonic Wars, Vanity Fair is William Makepeace Thackeray’s masterpiece. At its center is one of the most unforgettable characters in nineteenth-century literature: the enthralling Becky Sharp, a charmingly ruthless social climber who is determined to leave behind her humble origins, no matter the cost. Her gentler friend Amelia, by contrast, only cares for Captain George Osborne, despite his selfishness...
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Maladies and Medicine offers a lively exploration of health and medical cures in early modern England. The introduction sets out the background in which the body was understood, covering the theory of the four humors and the ways that male and female bodies were conceptualized. It also explains the hierarchy of healers from university trained physicians, to the itinerant women healers who traveled the country offering cures based on inherited knowledge...
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Following Britain and the Ocean Road, Ian Friel expertly navigates the history of Britain and the sea from the Middle Ages to modern times. With Breaking Seas, Broken Ships, we follow the story of Britain's maritime history through some of its most dramatic shipwrecks. From the country's imperial zenith to the very different world of the early twenty-first century we encounter an extraordinary range of people, ships and events, including... The crew...
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The essays in this volume are all inspired by the historical scholarship of J.C. Davis. During a prolific career, Davis has transformed our understanding of early modern utopian literature and its contexts, and compelled students of seventeenth-century English to re-evaluate the significance of movements and individuals who have had a prominent place in the historiography of the English Revolution. Davis's analyses of groups like the Levellers and...
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"For centuries, living afloat on Britain's waterways has been a rich part of the fabric of our social history, from the fisherfolk of ancient Britain to the bohemian houseboat dwellers of the 1950s and beyond. Whether they have chosen to leave the land behind and take to the water or been driven there by necessity, the history of the houseboat is a unique and fascinating seam of British history. In Water Gypsies , Julian Dutton - who was born and...
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The first policewomen were established during the Great War, but with no powers of arrest; the first women lawyers did not practise until the early twentieth century, and despite the fact that women worked as matrons in Victorian prisons, there were few professional women working as prison officers until the 1920s. The Justice Women traces the social history of the women working in courts, prisons and police forces up to the 1970s. Their history includes...
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The ninth century Historia Brittonum is the first source that mentions Arthur and lists twelve battles, including the famous Badon Hill. Much ink has been spilt debating the identity and location of Arthur. This book will demonstrate that some of the battles can indeed be located with some confidence. Rather than fit a specific theory as to his identity the battles are placed in the fragmenting provincial, political and military context of the late...
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How advances in weapons technology transformed the British soldier's experience of war during the nineteenth century.
How did technical advances in weaponry alter the battlefield during the reign of Queen Victoria? In 1845, in the first Anglo-Sikh War, the outcome was decided by the bayonet; just over fifty years later, in the second Boer War, the combatants were many miles apart. How did this transformation come about, and what impact did it have...
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'The book stands comparison with A.L. Morton's 'People's History' and G.D.H. Cole's 'Common People'. But it is more than just this. It is in a real sense a history for our own times.' John Foster, Emeritus Professor, University of the West of Scotland'This book is ideal for its purpose. I only wish it had been available in the decades when I was teaching trade union courses.' Jim Fryth, Labour History Review'At last a readable and accessible general...
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The Roman war machine comprised land and naval forces. Although the former has been studied extensively, less has been written and understood about the naval forces of the Roman Empire. Britain's navy, known as Classis Britannica until the mid-third century, was a strong fighting force in its own right. Its vessel types, personnel, tactics, roles and technology have never been studied in depth. Here in Sea Eagles of Empire Simon Elliott explores the...
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Richard Shelton is a young knight during the Wars of the Roses. We see him ascend and rescue his lady love. He then seeks revenge against his father's murderer, but when the evidence points towards his guardian he is forced to go into hiding. He joins the band of outlaws known as the Black Arrow.
16) Queen Victoria
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Known for its advances in literature, industrialization, politics, and science, the Victorian era was a prominent time in British history. However, author Lytton Strachey remembers Queen Victoria as a person instead of just focusing on her accomplishments. First starting with a brief history of her predecessors and origins, Victoria was crowned just as she came of age. Having only been eighteen, Queen Victoria was widely unfamiliar to her subjects...
17) Men of iron
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In seeking to avenge his unjustly accused father, young Myles Falworth is knighted and wins the friendship of King Henry IV.
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Ten years ago, a technological revolution swept through cinemas around the world, as analogue projectors were replaced with digital equipment. It was not just the plastic medium of film that was removed from projection boxes during this transformation, most cinemas took this opportunity to also evict the human projectionists who were hitherto in charge of screenings. Projectionists had been hidden from the sight of audiences for most of the history...
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Between 1970 and 1972 the Angry Brigade used guns and bombs in a series of symbolic attacks against property. A series of communiqués accompanied the actions, explaining the choice of targets and the Angry Brigade philosophy: autonomous organization and attacks on property alongside other forms of militant working class action. Targets included the embassies of repressive regimes, police stations and army barracks, boutiques and factories, government...
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Seeking Sanctuary explores the history of people looking for refuge in Great Britain. It starts with those Protestant refugees fleeing oppression and persecution from Catholic Spain who ruled the Netherlands in the sixteenth century. It traces successive waves of peoples in the context of why they fled. At various times this was due to religious persecution, political upheaval, war and ethnic cleansing.