Welcome to Literature & Latte’s Book Club. Each month, we will read and discuss a work of literature from the rich reservoir of novels that are now out of copyright and in the public domain. We would love you to take part.
Why have we chosen to focus on public-domain titles?
- In these straitened times, we want to be inclusive. We hope that the availability of free or cheap texts may encourage participation, without committing you to vast expenditure at your bookseller’s.
- By choosing older novels, we can consider how they have stood the test of time, outside the commercial context and fashions of their original publication.
- There are so many good books out there, waiting to be read (or re-read), and we want to read them!
Previous book choices have included:
- The Sign of the Four, by Arthur Conan Doyle
- Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
- The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad
- The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane
- Middlemarch, by George Eliot
- A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
- Dracula, by Bram Stoker
- The Fortune of the Rougons, by Émile Zola
- Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe
- A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
- The Devil’s Pool, by George Sand
- Moonfleet, by J. Meade Falkner
This month, we are reading Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen. Please join us in that discussion – and you are also welcome to post comments in our previous discussions, if you wish to carry on the conversations on earlier book selections. We’re leaving those discussions open indefinitely.
Do feel free to propose any specific books that you would like to be considered in a future monthly book-choice poll. But please hold back from actually discussing their content, or we’ll have nothing left to talk about when the proper time comes. 
Thank you for joining us, and we look forward to many long and happy discussions ahead. Don’t forget that we also have a forum category for discussions about books and authors other than those in Book Club, and you can find this here.
All the best,
Astrid