Literary Pursuits

Grace Livingston Hill

One author who holds nostalgic memories for me is Grace Livingston Hill. She lived from 1865 to 1947, so no, I was not reading her novels when they were first released. They were actually already very vintage by the time I was reading them in the 1980s. 

Grace Livingston Hill wrote over 100 novels and our public library had many of them when I was a teenager. I read as many as I could get my hands on between 1980 and 1983, which turned out to be most of them.

Since then I’ve re-read a few of them from time to time as the mood strikes me for something sweet and old-fashioned. They are very predictable and oh-so-precious. Some modern readers don’t care for the sappiness of them. However, I love GLH’s exquisite descriptions and enjoy chuckling over the occasional melodramatic scenes.

I’ve been collecting them for several years and own most of them now. A few are in vintage hardback editions, but most are in not-quite-as-vintage paperback editions. I also own a few that are in the public domain on Kindle.

My Reviews and/or Commentary

Free Ebooks

The titles in this section are free to download. If you read on Kindle, you can use the Send-to-Kindle feature to load the files onto your device for convenience.

Free Audiobooks

The following books are apparently in the public domain because they are available as free audiobooks from LibriVox.

Do you know about LibriVox? It’s where you can download totally free audiobooks. All books from LibriVox are in the public domain (meaning very vintage) and are read by volunteers. Some of the readers are better than others. But hey! You can’t beat the price, right?

Do you like to read vintage novels? Have you ever read any by Grace Livingston Hill? I’d love to hear about it!

6 Comments

  • Dee

    Oh my! It’s not a matter of have I read GLH novels. It’s how many times, especially in my teen years! Predictable, yes, but that didn’t keep me away. I still have to read one now and then…and chuckle as I do so. And think of you, Karla–of the times we’ve laughed together over some of her descriptions. Thanks for posting!

  • Sheila DelCharco

    I’ve read one of her books because of YOU (the Enchanted Barn)! It was very predictable but very sweet. Right now my (virtual) TBR is huge but I’ll keep her in mind for when I need an easy sweet story. Love your vintage collection!

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