A Master of Fortune: Being Further Adventures of Captain Kettle

Hyne, Charles John Cutcliffe Wright, 1866-1944Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
505K words
Chapters
51

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Sea VoyageVengeance and GratitudeAntiheroJianghu FeudPersonal CharismaAdventure NarrativeHumorous SatireWealth StoriesExotic CultureSeries Sequel

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 Master of Fortune: Being Further Adventures of Captain Kettle by HyneAuthor: Hyne, Charles John Cutcliffe Wright, 1866-1944,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jun 1, 2004

Editor's review

This book is a sequel in the Captain Kettle series by Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne and belongs to the tradition of nautical adventure fiction. Captain Kettle is known as a stubborn, resourceful figure with a touch of the rogue, and the story revolves around the various troubles he encounters at sea and in foreign ports, with tight plotting and lively dialogue bearing the clear mark of late Victorian to Edwardian popular fiction. As a free e-book from Project Gutenberg, its value lies first in accessibility: readers can encounter an original English popular novel now hard to find in bookshops without paying, making it suitable as English reading material or a supplementary sample for studying the adventure novel genre. Read it as a "slice of its era": enjoy the chases and escapes while noting the imperial-era nautical attitudes and character construction it reflects. Note that this is the original English text, with expressions over a century old, so beginners should slow their pace.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read the earlier book in the series or learn the basic setup of Captain Kettle first; the plot will then be easier to follow.
  2. After each chapter, summarize the events in one or two sentences to help follow the unfolding nautical adventure.
  3. Do not look up every unfamiliar nautical term; grasp the plot first and fill in vocabulary later.
  4. Read alongside background on early twentieth-century popular magazine serial fiction.

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.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51

FAQ

Is this book in the original English or a Chinese translation? This is an original English e-book provided by Project Gutenberg; the text is in English with no Chinese translation included. Chinese readers need some English reading ability or should use a dictionary or translation tools for support.
Can I read this without having read the earlier book? Yes, but this is a later adventure in the Captain Kettle series, and the character relationships and some background connect to the earlier book. Learning the captain's general character and history beforehand will make the plot connections and character motives easier to understand.
Is this book suitable for learning English? It can serve as extensive reading material, but the language carries English expressions a century old, and sentence structure and word choice differ from modern English. It is better for readers with some foundation, and you should focus on following the plot rather than reading every sentence closely.
What are the practical features of the e-book edition? Published by Project Gutenberg as a free e-book, it is usually available in formats such as plain text and can be opened on a computer, e-reader, or phone. It has no modern publisher's annotations or introduction, so readers must supply background information themselves.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Hyne, Charles John Cutcliffe Wright, 1866-1944 Author

Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne (1866–1944) was a British novelist best known for adventure and fantasy fiction. Public information about him is limited, and many details of his life remain unknown, yet the six works held in the collection show wide interests and a versatile pen: the imaginative fantasy of The Lost Continent, which envisions an ancient civilization; the sea adventures of Captain Kettle in A Master of Fortune; and the historical romance Prince Rupert, the Buccaneer. He also wrote The Recipe for Diamonds, Through Arctic Lapland, and Kate Meredith, Financier, ranging across exploration and travel, suspense, and the world of business. His narratives move briskly, with twisting plots that combine popular adventure with carefully drawn exotic and historical settings.