A Crystal Age

William Henry HudsonProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.7

Word count: 328K words
Chapters: 33

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 Crystal Age by W. H. HudsonAuthor: Hudson, W. H. (William Henry), 1841-1922,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Feb 1, 2005

Editor's review

A Crystal Age is a utopian, science-fiction-tinged novel by W. H. Hudson. It follows a protagonist who unexpectedly enters a highly ordered future society living in harmony with nature, where he experiences clashes of ideas and emotional entanglements. Its value lies not in thrilling plot but in using an unfamiliar world to reflect on human civilization, gender relations, and the ethics of life, carrying the reflections on modernity of a late-nineteenth-century thinker. Hudson also had a background in natural-history writing, and his detailed, evocative descriptions of the natural environment give the social allegory an ecological dimension. Readers used to fast-paced narrative may find the early buildup slow, but once they settle into the setting they will find it intellectually dense. This edition comes from Project Gutenberg's public-domain electronic text, making it suitable as supplementary reading for a thematic unit on the utopian novel in an English literature course, and for readers interested in early science fiction, social imagination, and late Victorian thought who wish to read slowly, notebook in hand, tracing the shifts in the society's rules and the narrator's stance.

Who it's for

A good fit for

English-language readers interested in late-nineteenth-century utopian fiction and early science fiction
Humanities students studying social imagination and gender issues in literature
Readers who enjoy nature description and speculative narrative and can accept a slow pace
Advanced learners seeking to expand their reading of English-language originals through public-domain e-books

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting a plot-driven, fast-paced adventure
Readers whose English level is still beginner and who struggle with long sentences and passages of argument
Popular-science readers seeking clear scientific conclusions rather than literary imagination

Reading tips

Read the first few chapters first to grasp how the narrator enters the Crystal Age, then go back and sort out the society's rules.
Prepare a chart of characters and institutions, noting as you read how gender, labor, and views of nature are defined.
Slow down at passages dense with argument, briefly summarize each paragraph's central claim, then continue.
After finishing, compare it with other utopian works and write a short commentary on the cost of an ideal society.

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

Is this book hard science fiction or a social allegory?

It is closer to a utopian novel in the form of a social allegory; the science-fiction setting mainly serves to construct a social space different from reality, with the focus on using unfamiliar institutions to reflect on civilization, gender, and the human relationship to nature, rather than on working out technical details. It is best understood in the context of late-nineteenth-century literature of social imagination.

What English level does it require?

The original is late-nineteenth- to early-twentieth-century English, with rather long sentences and intertwined argument and description; the vocabulary is not obscure, but the rhythm takes getting used to. It suits readers with a college-level reading foundation in English who are used to reading literary originals; beginners may start with a Chinese translation or an introduction before returning to the original.

What is special about this edition?

This is the public-domain electronic text provided by Project Gutenberg, a free e-book resource that is easy to search and excerpt on a computer or e-reader. It contains no modern scholarly notes or introduction, so readers need to supply background material themselves or use it alongside a literary-history course.

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About the author

William Henry Hudson Author · British · 1841–1922

W. H. Hudson (William Henry Hudson, 1841–1922) was a British writer, naturalist and ornithologist. Born near Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1841, he spent his childhood on the Pampas and retained a lifelong attachment to the natural world of South America. He moved to England in 1869 and became a British citizen in 1900, and thereafter he long observed and wrote about the birds and landscapes of the English countryside. His writing blends naturalist observation with literary craft. His representative works, including Green Mansions, The Purple Land and Far Away and Long Ago, mostly take nature and the South American jungle as their subjects, while A Shepherd's Life, Birds in London and The Naturalist in La Plata record his close attention to rural life and birds. Sixteen of his works are held here, including novels, reminiscences and nature essays, written in a clear and highly personal style.