Historical web novels with public chapters on NovelCult.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is one of Mark Twain’s most enduring novels. During a stay at a modern-day English castle, the narrator meets a mysterious stranger. The stranger, Hank Morgan, is an engineer from Connecticut, and proceeds to weave a satirical, biting, and hilarious tale of how he traveled back in time to find himself in the court of the legendary King Arthur.
Mark Twain · Comedy · 47 ch
Bellarion, a young orphan, leaves the abbey he was raised in to attend university and learn Greek. He quickly learns the dangers of life in fifteenth-century Italy, as he is robbed, caught in a riot, and chased through town by the authorities. He tangles himself in a plot against the local regent, plays one side against the other, and declares his service to the beautiful but uninterested Valeria.
Rafael Sabatini · Adventure · 47 ch
Peter Blood, with experience as a soldier and sailor, is practicing medicine in Bridgewater, England, when he inadvertently gets caught up in a rebellion being waged by the Duke of Monmouth. After being convicted of treason, Blood and some of the rebels are sentenced to slavery in the Caribbean. The year is 1688.
Rafael Sabatini · Adventure · 31 ch
Robert Lewis Stevenson continues the story of David Balfour, starting directly where Kidnapped left off. Compared to Kidnapped, Catriona is much more of a comedy of manners, politics, and romance than a simple action-adventure story, but it still has several of Stevenson’s trademark escapades, imprisonments, and daring escapes. The title character David Balfour attempts to navigate, to his own peril, his apparent role in the Appin murder, the subsequent trial of James of the Glens, life among high society, and the machinations of James Macgregor Drummond, the father of David’s great love, Catriona.
Robert Louis Stevenson · Adventure · 33 ch
In the Scarlet Pimpernel’s fourth outing, he and his league want to free the orphaned Dauphin of France from his captors. But someone else has the same idea, although for very different, and selfish, reasons. In addition to trying to outflank his rival, the Pimpernel also has to deal with a member of his inner circle whose romance has caused him to disobey orders and put the entire plan in jeopardy.
Baroness Orczy · Adventure · 50 ch
The young Vicomte de Marny rashly challenges a French official to a duel, and dies as a result. The Vicomte’s father, the ancient Duc de Marny, insists that his daughter, Juliette, swear an oath before God to seek revenge on the man who killed her brother. Years later, as the French Revolution rages, Juliette insinuates herself into the official’s household, and quickly discovers a way to anonymously accuse him before the National Convention.
Baroness Orczy · Adventure · 32 ch
Set in 12th-century England, Prince John rules while his brother King Richard is away during the Crusades. During his reign, Prince John and others of Norman nobility abuse their power over the Saxons, forcing Saxons off their lands and many Saxon nobles into serfdom. Ivanhoe, a man disowned by his own Saxon father for going to war alongside the Norman King Richard, returns from the Crusades in disguise and appears in a tournament at Ashby.
Walter Scott · Historical · 46 ch
Written in 1886, Kidnapped is an adventure novel set in Scotland in the mid-1700s, not long after the Jacobite rebellion in the Highlands which had attempted to set Bonnie Prince Charlie on the throne. This rebellion was put down brutally and afterwards the Government imposed strict controls on Highlanders, outlawing many clan leaders. The protagonist of Stevenson’s novel is young David Balfour, who is in his late teens.
Robert Louis Stevenson · Adventure · 33 ch
John Ridd, a young yeoman farmer, chances upon a beautiful girl in an injudicious visit to a secret valley. It’s a brief but life-defining moment, for John falls in love at first sight. Yet there are complications.
R. D. Blackmore · Adventure · 76 ch
In the Dauphiné area of France, soldiers have come to arrest some local aristos as part of the French Revolution’s anger and revenge on anyone with money. A young woman rescues the family’s papers and money from their house after their arrests, and persuades a childhood friend to hide the valuables. The friend is soon arrested for the theft, so the young woman seeks to go to where he has been taken in order to defend him.
Baroness Orczy · Adventure · 39 ch
Richard “Dick” Shelton fights in the service of Sir Daniel, an unprincipled knight who continually changes sides in the War of the Roses. Dick helps a young lady, dressed as a man, who is escaping Sir Daniel’s attempt to marry her off. In the meantime, Dick suspects that the man he serves had a hand in killing his father, and must figure out who his real friends are.
Robert Louis Stevenson · Adventure · 33 ch
In the third published installment of her Scarlet Pimpernel stories, Baroness Orczy brings back Chauvelin, the French official unable to catch the Pimpernel in the first novel. This time he is more determined, more ruthless, and more devious. He plans to capture both the Pimpernel and his wife, threatening an entire town in the process.
Baroness Orczy · Adventure · 35 ch
The Last of the Mohicans is one of the most famous tales of pioneer American adventure. Set during the French and Indian War, Mohicans tells the tale of the journey of two daughters to meet their father, a colonel, at Fort William Henry. The road is long and dangerous, and they, along with their American and Native guides, encounter adventure at each step.
James Fenimore Cooper · Adventure · 34 ch
A young woman in 17th century Holland inadvertently overhears the details of a plot to kill a political figure. The principal figures in the plot, one of whom is her brother and another her former lover, hire an insolent English mercenary to kidnap her to get her out of the way until their deeds are done. From there very little goes according to plan.
Baroness Orczy · Adventure · 48 ch
At the scene of Marat’s death, in an infamous cabaret in the old section of Paris, in an old abandoned château on the outskirts of the city, in a prison in the midst of the September massacres—the Scarlet Pimpernel and his League may be in all of these places, or they may be in none of them. In these eleven stories Chauvelin, Robespierre, and several other officials each make their attempts to catch the Pimpernel as he intervenes on the side of the innocent and helpless. The question in these stories is not really whether they will snare him, but how he will make his escape—and in some cases, whether he’s there at all.
Baroness Orczy · Adventure · 51 ch
The Luck of Barry Lyndon was first published as a serial in Fraser’s Magazine, then later as a complete volume entitled The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. —a title Thackeray disliked, but that was selected by his publisher. Thackeray had great difficulty composing the novel, and found himself frequently frustrated in his attempts to get Barry out of yet another jam.
William Makepeace Thackeray · Comedy · 20 ch
Robert Louis Stevenson’s fascination with the mid-18th Century Jacobite rebellion in Scotland led to the production of his classic Kidnapped, along with its later sequel, Catriona. The Master of Ballantrae —written only a couple years after Kidnapped —shares the same evocative historical setting. The story revolves around the fractious relationship of the two sons of the Lord of Durrisdeer: the elder and duplicitous James, and Henry, the stolid younger brother.
Robert Louis Stevenson · Adventure · 15 ch
In 13th century England, Norman of Torn is trained by his father, a French swordmaster with a grudge, in the art of swordsmanship—and to hate the English. He also befriends the priest Father Claude, who teaches him to respect the poor and the weak. As he comes of age, he becomes known as the “Devil of Torn,” the powerful leader of a band of outlaws that terrorizes the aristocracy and protects the poor.
Edgar Rice Burroughs · Adventure · 19 ch
The Prince and the Pauper remains one of Twain’s more popular novels, having been adapted many times for the stage, screen, and elsewhere. When Tom Canty, a young pauper in London, meets Prince Edward, the two switch clothes and assume the other’s identity. Tom then learns the life of royalty, while the true prince discovers the troubles of commoners.
Mark Twain · Historical · 36 ch
At the height of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, a mysterious daredevil rescues French aristocrats from execution and smuggles them out of France. This secretive escape artist is known to the French authorities only by the drawings of a flower, the scarlet pimpernel, that he leaves as his calling card. Marguerite St. Just has avoided the worst of the revolutionary turmoil.
Baroness Orczy · Adventure · 31 ch