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A digital edition of the Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The History of the Peloponnesian War (Greek: Ἱστορίαι, "Histories") is a historical account of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), which was fought between the Peloponnesian League (led by Sparta) and the Delian League (led by Athens). It was written by Thucyd...

"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of Putnam's Magazine, and reprinted with minor textual alterations in ...

Having entered the British Navy at the age of twelve, Horatio Lord Nelson achieved the rank of captain at the age of twenty. As captain, he was quickly recognized as a magnetic and controversial figure. He triumphed at Cape St. Vincent and the Nile, but failed...

Translated from the German by Oswald Charles Wood, M. D.

"Culture and Anarchy" is Arnold's most famous piece of writing on culture which established his High Victorian cultural agenda and remained dominant in debate from the 1860s until the 1950s. Arnold's often quoted phrase "culture is the best which has been thou...

Essayes: Religious Meditations. Places of Perswasion and Disswasion. Seene and Allowed (1597) was the first published book by the philosopher, statesman and jurist Francis Bacon. The Essays are written in a wide range of styles, from the plain and unadorned to...

The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature is a book by Harvard University psychologist and philosopher William James. It comprises his edited Gifford Lectures on natural theology, which were delivered at the University of Edinburgh in Scot...

In this book, first published in book form in 1897, James ponders such conundrums as... Is life worth living? . The sentiment of rationality . The dilemma of determinism . The moral philosopher and the moral life . Great men and their environment . The importa...

Charles Sanders Peirce argues that the aim of inquiry is the fixation of belief, and that the scientific method is the most effective way of so doing.

On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, is a collection of six essays by Thomas Carlyle, published in 1841, based on a series of lectures he delivered in 1840. The lectures, which glorified great men throughout history, were enormously popular. In ...

The Conquest of Granada is a Restoration era stage play, a two-part tragedy written by John Dryden that was first acted in 1670 and 1671 and published in 1672. It is notable both as a defining example of the "heroic drama" pioneered by Dryden, and as the subje...

Advancement of Learning, The, by Francis Bacon (1605), the original title being ‘Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human.’ This book, received with great favor by the court and by scholars, was afterwards enlarged and published in Lati...

Specimen Days first appeared in 1882 within a volume entitled Specimen Days & Collect, published by Rees Welsh and Company in Philadelphia. Composed in 1881 largely out of notes, sketches, and essays written at various stages of the poet's life from the Civil ...

On the Origin of Species (or, more completely, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life), published on 24 November 1859, is a work of scientific literature by Charles Darwin which is...

This book contains a compilation of Henry David Thoreau's works about slavery and civil reform.

A Treatise of Human Nature (1738–40) is a book by Scottish philosopher David Hume, considered by many to be Hume's most important work and one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy. The Treatise is a classic statement of philosophical empi...

The French Revolution: A History was written by the Scottish essayist, philosopher, and historian Thomas Carlyle. The three-volume work, first published in 1837 (with a revised edition in print by 1857), charts the course of the French Revolution from 1789 to ...

Sartor Resartus (meaning 'The tailor re-tailored') is an 1836 novel by Thomas Carlyle, first published as a serial in Fraser's Magazine in November 1833–August 1834. The novel purports to be a commentary on the thought and early life of a German philosopher ca...

This book collects together lectures on English poetry Hazlitt delivered at London’s Surrey Institution in 1818, ranging from ‘On Poetry in General’, through acknowledged classics such as Chaucer, Spenser and Shakespeare, and on to ‘The Living Poets’.