Nonfiction

36 works of nonfiction from 350 BC to 1919, by 27 authors including John Ruskin, Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, G.W.F. Hegel, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Every text is complete, free to read, and comes with chapter navigation and AI commentary.

Philosophy Fiction Drama Poetry History Nonfiction Essays
Ancient Medieval Renaissance 17th-18th C 19th Century 20th Century

Ancient · 2

On Horsemanship — Xenophon, c. 350 BCE · trans. H. G. Dakyns
The History of Rome — Livy · trans. D. Spillan

Medieval · 1

Summa Theologica — Thomas Aquinas · trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province

17th-18th C · 6

A Tale of a Tub — Jonathan Swift, 1704
The Rambler — Samuel Johnson, 1750
Italian Journey — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · trans. A. J. W. Morrison
Journal to Stella — Jonathan Swift
Poetry and Truth — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · trans. John Oxenford
The History of England — David Hume

19th Century · 25

On Love — Stendhal, 1822 · trans. Philip and Cecil Woolf
The Spirit of the Age — William Hazlitt, 1825
Past and Present — Thomas Carlyle, 1843
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers — Henry David Thoreau, 1849
Recollections — Alexis de Tocqueville, 1850 · trans. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
My Bondage and My Freedom — Frederick Douglass, 1855
The Life of Charlotte Brontë — Elizabeth Gaskell, 1857
Essays in Criticism — Matthew Arnold, 1865
Sesame and Lilies — John Ruskin, 1865
The Innocents Abroad — Mark Twain, 1869
The Descent of Man — Charles Darwin, 1871
Roughing It — Mark Twain, 1872
Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes — Robert Louis Stevenson, 1879
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass — Frederick Douglass, 1881
Specimen Days — Walt Whitman, 1882
An Autobiography — Anthony Trollope, 1883
Life on the Mississippi — Mark Twain, 1883
The Celtic Twilight — W.B. Yeats, 1893
Memoirs of a Revolutionist — Peter Kropotkin, 1899
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences — G.W.F. Hegel · trans. William Wallace
Essays — George Eliot
Modern Painters — John Ruskin
Philosophy of Fine Art — G.W.F. Hegel · trans. F.P.B. Osmaston
The Stones of Venice, Volume I — John Ruskin
Virginibus Puerisque — Robert Louis Stevenson

20th Century · 2

Eminent Victorians — Lytton Strachey, 1918
Prejudices: First Series — H.L. Mencken, 1919

Authors · 27

Alexis de Tocqueville · Anthony Trollope · Charles Darwin · David Hume · Elizabeth Gaskell · Frederick Douglass · G.W.F. Hegel · George Eliot · H.L. Mencken · Henry David Thoreau · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · John Ruskin · Jonathan Swift · Livy · Lytton Strachey · Mark Twain · Matthew Arnold · Peter Kropotkin · Robert Louis Stevenson · Samuel Johnson · Stendhal · Thomas Aquinas · Thomas Carlyle · W.B. Yeats · Walt Whitman · William Hazlitt · Xenophon

Nonfiction: the full list on Works