Barnes Noble imprint: 2826 books

Originally published in 1913-1916, the pioneering American biographer followed up his Union Portraits with these profiles of some great women of world history. His subjects range from Jane Austen and Mrs. Samuel Pepys (Elizabeth Saint-Michel) to Whig salonista Elizabeth Vassall (the Lady Holland) and the diarist Eugénie de Guérin.

English author and diplomat Sir Henry Wotton (1568–1639) was secretary to the Earl of Essex and later became a favorite of King James I, who knighted him and appointed him ambassador to Venice. Adolphus W. Ward’s engaging biography of Wotton is both a compelling life story and a thoughtful study of Wotton’s accomplishments.

William Cobbett’s lessons on grammar, punctuation, and everything pertaining to writing well are conveyed in an intriguing form; namely, in letters to his son James Paul Cobbett. Cobbett’s work cannot be properly understood outside of the context of his career; the grammar lessons found here are put in the service of expressing his political ideas.

This 1911 collection—or, in the author's words, "little gallery of portraits"—contains eleven brief biographical chapters on such notables as Bishop Westcott, Professor Newton, Henry Bradshaw, Charles Kingsley, and Matthew Arnold, among others.

Originally serialized as The Miser's Niece, Helen with a High Hand was published in book form in 1910. It is a short, comedic novel about a miserly man and his estranged young niece. An enjoyable battle of wills takes place, as both characters scheme to achieve the same outcome. Under his niece's influence, the uncle reluctantly abandons some of his financial prejudices.

After the success of The Amenities of Book-Collecting, the author tried his hand at a more personal style. In this 1921 collection are “What Is the Matter with the Bookshop?” “A Slogan for Booksellers,” “‘ ’Tis Not for Mortals to Command Success,’” “Meditations on a Quarto Hamlet,”...

Gathered in 1914 from The Yale Review and other periodicals, this collection of critical essays considers Richardson, Dickens, Austen, and Marlowe; it also includes the articles “Notes on Mark Twain,” “Realism and Reality in Fiction,” “Carlyle’s Love-Letters,” “Schiller’s Personality and Influence,” “Schopenhauer and Omar,” “Lessing as a Creative Critic,” and more.

A biography of William Pitt the Elder, the Prime Minister under George III, Pitt led Britain during the Seven Years’ War and then became the Earl of Chatham in 1766. The book takes an expansive view of its subject:  "For good and for evil, through heroism and through spoliation, with all its vast,...

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) orchestrated the overthrow of the English monarchy and for a time turned England into a republican Commonwealth. This riveting history sweeps the reader through the Lord Protector’s early life and marriage, two civil wars, campaigns in Ireland and Scotland, his foreign and...

This 1886 collection of critical and historical essays by the trailblazing English poet includes “Short Notes on English Poets,” “A Century of English Poetry,” “Congreve,” “Collins,” “Wordsworth and Byron,” “Emily Brontë,” “Mary Queen of Scots,” “Keats,” and others—these essays contain strength as well as ironic humor.

A captivating biography of Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)—poet, courtier, soldier, and one of the Elizabethan Age’s most prominent figures. Sidney exemplified the qualities of a courtier: learned and politic, but also generous, brave, and impulsive. He was memorialized as the flower of English manhood in Edmund Spenser’s Astrophel, one of the greatest English Renaissance elegies.

John Doran’s highly entertaining history of queens of England of the House of Hanover is indispensable reading for anyone passionate about English history. Volume one of this two-volume set presents portraits of Sophia Dorothea of Zell, wife of George I; Caroline Wilhelmina Dorothea, wife of George II; and Charlotte Sophia, wife of George III.

An engrossing survey of early “picture books,” or illustrated books, these collected works examine the art of using illustrations to tell a story as well as discuss a range of other “bookish” subjects, such as illustrated bibles and printers’ marks—resulting in a charming portrait of the early days of bookmaking.

This biography paints an engrossing portrait of Thomas Wentworth (1593–1641), a British statesman and victim of Charles the First’s treachery. Author Elizabeth Cooper looks at Wentworth’s life and his role in history—“an invaluable contribution towards the elucidation of the troubles of those...