A Red Wallflower

Warner, Susan, 1819-1885Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.0

Word count: 823K words
Chapters: 83

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 Red Wallflower by Susan WarnerAuthor: Warner, Susan, 1819-1885,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Oct 7, 2008

Editor's review

A Red Wallflower is a novel by the nineteenth-century American author Susan Warner, falling under the category of American and Canadian literature. Warner's works often portray domestic life and inner lives with delicate strokes, and this book likewise centers on a reserved, overlooked woman; the title's "red wallflower" is itself a metaphor for the neglected. For readers accustomed to fast-paced narrative, the book moves slowly, but it offers a window onto nineteenth-century American social customs, family ethics, and the situation of women. As a free eBook from Project Gutenberg, it is better suited as supplementary material for the study of literary history and for reading the English original than as light reading. Readers are advised to read it slowly in quiet hours and to note the era's attitudes revealed in dialogue and psychological description. Overall, this is a mid-period American novel worth rediscovering, suited to researchers and lovers of classic literature.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers studying nineteenth-century American literature and women's writing
Lovers of slow-paced domestic fiction who enjoy English originals
Learners who need public-domain English texts for close-reading practice
General readers interested in the history of American social customs

Not a good fit for

Suspense or adventure readers expecting strong plot and fast pacing
Beginners with weak English who need notes and a translated edition
Young readers who prefer contemporary subjects and contemporary values

Reading tips

Read a chapter or two first to get a feel for the pacing and style, then decide whether to read closely or skim
Read alongside histories of nineteenth-century American women's lives to understand the characters' choices
Note where the "red wallflower" image appears and trace how its symbolic meaning develops
Use an e-device for lookups and excerpts to reduce the frustration of reading the original

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 suitable for beginners reading English originals?

Not really for absolute beginners. The work dates from the nineteenth century, with long sentences and period vocabulary, and the Gutenberg edition usually has no notes. If you are just starting out, read a simplified or bilingual edition first and return to the original later; readers with some English reading ability who can use lookup tools will fare more smoothly.

Why does the title use the "red wallflower" as a metaphor?

In English, "wallflower" often refers to a woman left uninvited and overlooked at a ball, and adding "red" heightens the contrast of being conspicuous yet ignored. The image points to the novel's attention to the inner world of the unnoticed; readers can watch for how it echoes through characters' relationships and self-perception without rushing to find a single explanation.

What is the difference between the Gutenberg edition and an ordinary published edition?

The Gutenberg edition is a free electronic text compiled by volunteers; its core value is providing freely accessible public-domain original text, usually without modern introductions, notes, or copyrighted illustrations. It is suited to checking the original text and textual analysis, but the reading experience depends on the device and the reader's own research skills; if you need scholarly notes, find an annotated edition to consult alongside it.

Do I need to know the author's life to read this book?

Not strictly, but it helps. Knowing the nineteenth-century American social environment in which Susan Warner lived makes it easier to understand the book's family structures, religious faith, and female roles. Read the main text first, and look up period background only when you encounter value judgments you don't understand, avoiding the temptation to map the author's life directly onto the characters.

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About the author

Warner, Susan, 1819-1885 Author

Susan Warner (1819-1885) was a nineteenth-century American author known for inspirational coming-of-age fiction; her name and dates of birth and death appear in library catalog records. Public information about her is limited, and details of her life and education are difficult to establish with certainty, yet the library holds thirty-one of her works, which indicates a prolific and steady writing career. The Wide, Wide World is her best-known work, alongside Queechy, Diana, Nobody, Daisy, The End of a Coil, and Hills of the Shatemuc. Her fiction generally centers on young people's growth, family life, and moral trials, with a gentle and detailed style that emphasizes inner change and the formation of character. She found readers in the popular fiction market of her time and contributed to the later tradition of the coming-of-age novel.