A Backward Glance at Eighty

Murdock, Charles A. (Charles Albert), 1841-1928Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.4

Word count: 374K words
Chapters: 38

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.A Backward Glance at Eighty by Charles A. MurdockAuthor: Murdock, Charles A. (Charles Albert), 1841-1928,Language: English, Class: F850.5: United States local history: Pacific States, Release Date: Jul 14, 2004

Editor's review

Charles A. Murdock's A Backward Glance at Eighty is a memoir organized around personal experience, a text of American Pacific Coast local history and the life memories of the nineteenth-century westward-migration generation. Looking back from the perspective of a participant over eighty years of life, the author touches on early community life, involvement in local affairs, urban growth and changes in the spirit of the times, offering readers a personal observation beyond official history. Its value lies not in systematic local gazetteer narrative but in preserving the feelings and judgments of an ordinary educated class regarding social life during the western development period, and it can be read against materials on Pacific Coast urban history and immigration history. The prose is plain, with the composure and restraint of old-style memoirs, suitable as an emotional supplement to local history reading. Readers should note the selective memory and period bias inherent in memoirs and should not treat it as an objective compilation of historical sources. As a public-domain e-book, it is also easy to search and excerpt, suitable as reference material for local history writing.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in American Pacific Coast local history and nineteenth-century western life
Readers who enjoy personal memoirs and want to learn about early urban life in San Francisco
History enthusiasts needing emotional local-history material to assist writing or teaching
Readers of English public-domain memoirs concerned with the memory of immigrant generations

Not a good fit for

Rigorous researchers expecting systematic local gazetteer data, statistics and chronological sources
General readers who prefer strong plot narratives or novelized memoirs
Readers with little interest in nineteenth-century American local affairs and personal details

Reading tips

Read the preface and final chapter first to grasp the time span and motive of the author's retrospect, then skim relevant chapters by theme.
Read alongside maps of San Francisco and Pacific Coast urban history, anchoring the place names and personal names to specific spaces and dates.
Mark passages on community life, local affairs and the spirit of the times as source cards for local history writing.
Read against other westward-migration memoirs of the same period, comparing different memories and judgments of the same era by authors of different backgrounds.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

What history and places does this memoir mainly cover?

The book belongs to the category of American Pacific Coast local history; it is a personal memory in which the author, at eighty, looks back on his life, centered on the community life, local affairs and urban growth he experienced. The material does not provide more detailed chapter contents; readers may treat it as a sample of the life feelings of an educated class during the nineteenth-century western development period rather than a systematic local gazetteer.

Can the narrative in the memoir be directly cited as historical fact?

It should not be directly cited as objective historical fact. Memoirs are affected by selective memory, late-life standpoint and period bias, and names, dates and event details may be inaccurate. It is advisable to use it as emotional material and leads for questions, verify key facts against local gazetteers, newspapers and archives, and indicate its memoir nature and the author's perspective when citing.

Is the length and language difficulty of the English original suitable for general readers?

This is an English public-domain memoir; the language is generally plain but has old-style long sentences and local personal and place names, so the reading pace may be slow. It is advisable to read selectively by theme rather than word by word from beginning to end. A dictionary and a Pacific Coast map are enough; focus on the author's observations of the spirit of the times and community life rather than every detail.

What can readers gain from this book beyond official history?

Official history mostly records institutions, events and statistics, while memoirs preserve personal feelings about community atmosphere, daily interactions, participation in local affairs and urban change. Readers can see how historical change fell upon specific individuals, gaining a sense of the texture of nineteenth-century Pacific Coast social life, which is very helpful for understanding local history and the mentality of immigrant generations.

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About the author

Murdock, Charles A. (Charles Albert), 1841-1928 Author · 1841–1928

Charles A. Murdock (1841–1928) was an American author whose other biographical details remain limited in publicly available sources. His principal surviving work is A Backward Glance at Eighty, which, judging from its title and genre, is a reminiscence written in later life, retrospective in character and concerned with recalling personal experience and past events. The book is written in the first person, in a plain and restrained style, focusing on recording individual experience and the observations of his time rather than on grand narrative or literary display. The value of such memoirs often lies in preserving a concrete and intimate portrait of an era, allowing readers to glimpse the social life of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from a personal perspective. Given the limited material available, a full assessment of his life and work awaits further research.