1760s

3 books

sort genre era audiobooks

The Castle of Otranto Horace Walpole
Honestly, it's a bit ridiculous, a giant helmet falls out of nowhere in chapter one and things only get stranger, but that's the fun. If you enjoy gothic gloom with a straight face barely holding, this short, fevered little book started the whole tradition.
The Social Contract Jean-Jacques Rousseau, translated by G. D. H. Cole non-fiction
You get a bracing argument about political freedom, especially in Rousseau’s insistence that obeying laws you help make is different from submitting to a ruler. The prose can feel abstract and combative, but his questions about inequality, citizenship, and the general will keep needling you afterward.
The Vicar of Wakefield Oliver Goldsmith
Dr. Primrose is so cheerfully certain of his own wisdom that you wince and grin as disaster after disaster lands on his family, and somehow the book stays gentle through all of it. Good when you want something old-fashioned and kind, with a sly wink underneath.

3 books

sort genre era audiobooks

The Castle of Otranto Horace Walpole
Honestly, it's a bit ridiculous, a giant helmet falls out of nowhere in chapter one and things only get stranger, but that's the fun. If you enjoy gothic gloom with a straight face barely holding, this short, fevered little book started the whole tradition.
The Social Contract Jean-Jacques Rousseau, translated by G. D. H. Cole non-fiction
You get a bracing argument about political freedom, especially in Rousseau’s insistence that obeying laws you help make is different from submitting to a ruler. The prose can feel abstract and combative, but his questions about inequality, citizenship, and the general will keep needling you afterward.
The Vicar of Wakefield Oliver Goldsmith
Dr. Primrose is so cheerfully certain of his own wisdom that you wince and grin as disaster after disaster lands on his family, and somehow the book stays gentle through all of it. Good when you want something old-fashioned and kind, with a sly wink underneath.