Main Page
 |
Welcome to Wikisource,
the free library that anyone can improve.
330,023 texts in English
|
DECEMBER’S FEATURED TEXT
Grab a download!
Set at Rugby School (an English public school for boys) in the 1830s, this novel had a strong influence on the genre of British school-stories, including Billy Bunter and Harry Potter. This is the sixth edition of the novel and includes a preface by the author and several fine illustrations of Rugby School.
THE Browns have become illustrious by the pen of Thackeray and the pencil of Doyle within the memory of the young gentlemen who are now matriculating at the universities. Notwithstanding the well-merited but late fame which has now fallen upon them, any one at all acquainted with the family must feel that much has yet to be written and said before the British nation will be properly sensible of how much of its greatness it owes to the Browns. For centuries, in their quiet, dogged, homespun way, they have been subduing the earth in most English counties, and leaving their mark in American forests and Australian uplands. Wherever the fleets and armies of England have won renown, there stalwart sons of the Browns have done yeoman's work. With the yew bow and cloth-yard shaft at Cressy and Agincourt—with the brown bill and pike under the brave Lord Willoughby—with culverin and demi-culverin against Spaniards and Dutchmen—with hand-grenade and sabre, and musket and bayonet, under Rodney and St. Vincent, Wolfe and Moore, Nelson and Wellington, they have carried their lives in their hands; getting hard knocks and hard work in plenty, which was on the whole what they looked for, and the best thing for them; and little praise or pudding, which indeed they and most of us are better without. Talbots and Stanleys, St. Maurs, and such-like folk, have led armies and made laws time out of mind; but those noble families would be somewhat astounded—if the accounts ever came to be fairly taken—to find how small their work for England has been by the side of that of the Browns.
CURRENT COLLABORATIONS
| The current Community collaboration is collecting texts related to WikiProject NARA
Recent collaborations: Tenth Anniversary Contest, Disney, Domesday survey, Niccolò Machiavelli |
 |
| The current Maintenance of the Month task is Work index revision
Recent collaborations: Orphans, Proposed policies and guidelines, Author page connection with Wikidata items, Help page improvement, Undated works |
 |
NEW TEXTS
The Australian Emigrant (1854)
by George Henry Haydon
The O'Ruddy (1903)
by Stephen Crane and Robert Barr
The Lost Apocrypha of the Old Testament (1920)
by Montague Rhodes James
Thoughts On Parliamentary Reform (1859)
by John Stuart Mill
Aucassin and Nicolette (Bourdillon) (13th century, translation 1903)
by unknown author, translated by Francis William Bourdillon
Cricket (1898)
by Robert Henry Lyttelton
Cricket (1888)
by Allan Gilbson Steel, Robert Henry Lyttelton, et. al.
HIGHLIGHTS
Poetry from ancient and romantic to modern, in love and war
Texts, laws, constitutions of many countries
Documents from US history, including Revolution and Civil War
US law: Supreme Court decisions, government documents, presidential addresses
General literature: modern novels and short stories, horror stories, children’s literature, science fiction, drama
Original, encyclopedic, popular articles on relativity, physics, biology, and other sciences
EXPLORE WIKISOURCE
WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Commons | Wikibooks | Wikidata | Wikinews | Wikipedia | Wikiquote | Wikispecies | Wikiversity | Wikivoyage | Wiktionary | Meta-Wiki |
