Publisher Blurb:
This is a list of 100 books published in the 19th century that players might find on a bookshelf. These books are suitable for a historical or steampunk campaign set in that period.
The books are scientific in nature and cover such as steam power, electricity, evolution, astronomy, chemistry and physics. The books are all genuine books and some are by famous names, some still well known today. Whether or not the books have any in-game value other than decorative is up to the GameMaster.
The entries have the book's name, author, publication date and in every case other details, in particular the area that the book covers. They can be used to pad out a bookshelf with other genuine material, although it is unlikely that any one person would have books on the whole range of subject material. Unlike the other book lists, this one is ordered by date of publication, allowing suitable books to be chosen. The majority are from the latter part of the century, although there are some earlier books.
Some examples are:
31. A Manual of Metallurgy: More Particularly of the Precious Metals, Including the Methods of Assaying Them by George Hogarth Makins (1862, metals in general, including combining them with non-metals, salts and alloys, and specific metals, divided into classes and including precious metals and uranium)
32. Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature by Thomas Henry Huxley (1863, human evolution, the great apes, relations of man to lower animals and comparing fossil remains of Neanderthal and early Homo sapiens remains to modern man)
33. Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man by Charles Lyell (1863, deals with the age of the human race, ice ages, and Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, endorsing new evidence for human antiquity)