Below are links to free vintage novels, mostly published from the mid-1800s to 1923. They include bestsellers in a range of genres. This page is one of 10 containing links to 300+ novels. Use the Vintage Novels Directory to access the other 9 pages.
Vintage Novels Directory
Authors I, J, K & L
The Adventures of Captain Bonneville
Irving, Washington (1783-1859)
1830s. A highly adventurous narrative, based on first-hand information; Captain Bonneville’s own conversation with Washington Irving. This is a most exciting account of early pioneering amid the great western deserts and the Rocky Mountains, full of brilliant descriptions of scenery, character and exciting incident. Bonneville lived 1795-1878.
— Baker, E. A., A Guide to Historical Fiction (1914)
Black Friday
Isham, Frederic Stewart (1866-1922)
1869-71. The panic in New York on 24 Sep 1869, caused by wild financial speculation, and especially by Jay Gould’s operations and the attempted “Corner in Gold”, with later scenes in Paris under the Commune.
— Baker, E. A., A Guide to Historical Fiction (1914)
Ramona
Jackson, Helen Hunt (1830-1885)
A romance of southern California making a passionate plea for the Indians in their hopeless encounter with the white race.
— Bacon, Corinne, compiler, Standard Catalog: Fiction Section (1923)
The author also wrote an influential non-fiction work recounting a history of treaties with Native Americans that were violated by the federal government.
See: Jackson, Helen Hunt, A Century of Dishonor in Section 970.1 Native Americans in Native Americans of North America
Toby Tyler or Ten Weeks with a Circus by James Otis
Marie Grubbe; a Lady of the Seventeenth Century
Jacobsen, Jens Peter (1847-1885)
A character sketch drawn against a background of seventeenth century Denmark; a brilliant, colorful picture of a period as loose moraled and far cruder than the Restoration in England. Marie Grubbe is the lovely, sensitive daughter of a dissolute landowner. The beauty of the story is in her promise and development, its tragedy in her moral disintegration. This novel Brandes calls ‘one of the greatest tours de force in Danish literature.’
— Bacon, Corinne, compiler, Standard Catalog: Fiction Section (1923)
Daisy Miller
Audio Book
James, Henry (1843-1916)
A picture of the young American girl abroad, over confident and led into a tragic situation through ignorance of European conventions.
— A.L.A. Catalog 1926
All Roads Lead to Calvary
Jerome, Jerome K. (1859-1927)
The eternal struggle between the ideals of the spirit and the desires of the flesh is the theme. A charming woman journalist bent on making the world all over, is the heroine, while Carlton, the power of the press, obviously Lord Northcliffe, is the hero. There is an interesting treatment of a journalistic situation, a good picture of England before the war, several love stories and a lot of vital talk.
— Bacon, Corinne, compiler, Standard Catalog: Fiction Section (1923)
Secret Bread
Jesse, Fryniwyd Tennyson (1888-1958)
A profligate squire is married on his death-bed to his housekeeper, thus making her boy, born that night, the head of the family of four illegitimate children. The long story, full of realistic detail and fine descriptions of the Cornwall scene, chronicles the difficult and tragic circumstances that shape Ishmael’s character and make him not only fit to take his place as the great man of the neighborhood but capable of the understanding and renunciation demanded by a great love.
— Bacon, Corinne, compiler, Standard Catalog: Fiction Section (1923)
Country Doctor
Audio Book
Jewett, Sarah Orne (1849-1909)
A quiet, uneventful story of a country doctor and his ward, a girl who in her turn becomes a doctor, in defiance of the custom of her times.
— A.L.A. Catalog 1926
Tales of New England
Jewett, Sarah Orne (1849-1909)
Many writers have attacked New England life and character, but none has given so truthful and vivid an expression, within limitations, as Miss Jewett. She is especially the interpreter of women living on lonely farms and in small villages. Their bare external life, their moral courage, their eccentric tempers and ironical humor are set forth with infinite sympathy, skill, and variety.
— Bacon, Corinne, compiler, Standard Catalog: Fiction Section (1923)
Vintage fiction arranged by authors, names G-H
The Long Roll
Johnston, Mary (1870-1936)
1861-63. A southern story of the Valley campaign and the opening phases of the war, with Stonewall Jackson drawn on a large scale as the hero, whose death at Chancellorsville (2 May 1863) brings it to an end. Everything is viewed from the Confederate point of view. The life of a particular regiment is well represented, and there are many portraits of Jackson’s subordinates.
— Baker, E. A., A Guide to Historical Fiction (1914)
The Old Dominion
Johnston, Mary (1870-1936)
1649-51 A highly coloured romance of Virginia in Restoration times, when the colony was seething with disaffection caused by the sending of rebels to the plantations. The hero is one of the convicts sold into this slavery. He joins in a rising against the authorities, and his love for his master’s daughter leads to a series of sensational events. Much description of the landscapes and the stately homes of Virginia in the time of Sir William Berkeley.
— Baker, E. A., A Guide to Historical Fiction (1914)
To Have and to Hold
Audio Book
Johnston, Mary (1870-1936)
The beautiful heroine, to escape a more dreadful fate, embarks on the ship that is carrying the cargo of wives to the Virginia planters. A long series of dashing adventures follow in which the sturdy hero proves his mettle in defending his wife-by-purchase.
— A.L.A. Catalog 1926
The scenes are in and about Jamestown, in 1621.
Joanna Godden
Kaye-Smith, Sheila (1887-1956)
The theme is the development of an intensely vital and human, faulty but lovable woman who inherits a prosperous farm and the guardianship of a younger sister. We leave her at thirty-eight unmarried but undefeated, about to become a mother, her farm and her good name gone.
— A.L.A. Catalog 1926
Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz
The Romance of the Martin Connor
Kendall, Oswald
Excellent sea yarn in which an American tramp steamer makes an adventurous voyage up the Amazon, in defiance of a tyrannical rubber company, and trades with the Blowgun Indians. Vivid descriptions of sea life and tropical scenery.
— Bacon, Corinne, compiler, Standard Catalog: Fiction Section (1923)
Horse-Shoe Robinson: a Tale of the Tory Ascendency
Kennedy, John Pendleton (1795-1870)
A story, strong in local interest, of South Carolina during the Revolutionary War, founded on actual events and portraying historical people.
— Baker, E. A., A Guide to Historical Fiction (1914)
Collections of free books arranged by the U.S. place where they are set
Cicely; a Tale of the Georgia March
Kennedy, Sara Beaumont ( -1921)
1864-65. A love story, with the Civil War as background. Has been declared the finest pen-picture ever drawn of conditions in the South during the last year of the struggle; Nov 1864-April 1865. The capture and burning of Atlanta, Sherman’s march to the sea and the magnificent pageant of the president’s review of the Union armies after the peace are described.
— Baker, E. A., A Guide to Historical Fiction (1914)
The Prodigal Judge
Kester, Vaughan (1869-1911)
The South early in the 19th century, the plots for a slave insurrection, and a fine study in Judge Slocum Price.
— Baker, E. A., A Guide to Historical Fiction (1914)
Between the Lines; a Story of the War
King, Charles (1844-1933)
1862-65. The work of the Cavalry Corps, Army of the Potomac. This and General (Captain?) King’s other novels give an accurate narrative of military events, based on study, observation, and personal experience.
— Baker, E. A., A Guide to Historical Fiction (1914)
The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore
Westward Ho! or, The voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the county of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty, Queen Elizabeth
Kingsley, Charles (1819-1875)
One of the noblest, gentlest, most romantic and most manly of sea stories and tales of adventure. Based on achievements of sailors of the days of Drake and Raleigh and Grenville, on the Spanish main.
— A.L.A. Catalog 1926
“Captains Courageous,” a story of the Grand Banks
Audio Book
Kipling, Rudyard (1865-1936)
Story of the spoiled son of an American millionaire, washed overboard, off the Newfoundland banks, picked up by a fishing schooner and forced to share in the hard life and labor of the crew, an experience that makes a man of him.
— A.L.A. Catalog 1926
Kim
Audio Book
Kipling, Rudyard (1865-1936)
Kim is a street Arab from Lahore; an alert, precocious little vagabond, whose relations to the British secret service and journeys through India as the disciple of an old Lama bring before the reader a rich panorama of the multifarious life of the country.
— A.L.A. Catalog 1926
Vintage fiction arranged by authors, names M-N-O
Heralds of Empire; being the story of one Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade
Laut, Agnes Christina (1871-1936)
1671-83. Radisson’s exploits in the Hudson Bay region, fighting the French.
— Baker, E. A., A Guide to Historical Fiction (1914)
Sons and Lovers
Audio Book
Lawrence, David Herbert (1885-1930)
A story of filial and maternal devotion, presenting a vivid picture of the life of the English coal miners. The hero’s deep affection for his mother colors his relations with other women, so that he never finds complete satisfaction in their love.
— A.L.A. Catalog 1926
War of the World by H. G. Wells
The Throwback; a Romance of the Southwest
Lewis, Alfred Henry (1857-1914)
Adventures in the early days of Texas; ranching, cowboys, fighting with Indians, Mexicans, etc.
— Baker, E. A., A Guide to Historical Fiction (1914)
Main Street
Audio Book
Lewis, Sinclair (1885-1951)
Carol, college-bred girl with a liking for ‘high-brow’ drama and a hobby for town planning, marries a small-town doctor and tries to uplift the natives of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota. The atmosphere of the sordid smug little burg is well done.
— Bacon, Corinne, compiler, Standard Catalog: Fiction Section (1923)
Extricating Obadiah
Lincoln, Joseph Crosby (1870-1944)
Cape Cod story abounding in racy dialect and amusing situations. The Obadiah of the tale is a kindly, simple sea cook who inherits $12,000 and trouble therewith.
— Bacon, Corinne, compiler, Standard Catalog: Fiction Section (1923)
The Glory of Clementina
Locke, William John (1863-1930)
In this story of the humanizing of a rough and dowdy portrait painter of brilliant attainments, and an eccentric widower, familiar elements of popular fiction are worked naturally into a romance full of novelty, charm and whimsicality.
— Bacon, Corinne, compiler, Standard Catalog: Fiction Section (1923)
Call of the Wild
Audio Book
London, Jack (1876-1916)
A story of wild life in the Klondike. The hero, a magnificent dog, finally obeys “the call of the wild” and relapses into savagery.
— A.L.A. Catalog 1926
The Real Man
Lynde, Francis (1856-1930)
An efficient bank cashier suddenly has to depart under a cloud. The plot relates how, changed in name and character, he forcefully puts through the financial and engineering end of a big irrigating project for a company which is fighting for its life against moneyed interests. A stirring story.
— Bacon, Corinne, compiler, Standard Catalog: Fiction Section (1923)