A Sister of the Red Cross: A Tale of the South African War

Meade, L. T., 1854-1914Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
437K words
Chapters
44

Tags

English Originals War and Military Fiction Adventure JourneyFate and FortuneHeroismPatriotismHeartwarming NarrativePopular Narrative19th CenturyFemale Perspective

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 Sister of the Red Cross: A Tale of the South African War by L. T. MeadeAuthor: Meade, L. T., 1854-1914,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Dec 19, 2014

Editor's review

This work comes from L. T. Meade, a prolific writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is set against the Second Boer War (South African War), told through the eyes of a Red Cross nurse. Its value lies not in a grand view of military history but in weaving battlefield nursing and home-front support into individual lives, showing how war entered ordinary people's daily existence. As an early novel, its pace is slow and its narration carries the moralizing tone common in late Victorian literature; precisely for this reason, it offers today's readers a window into how British society of the time understood women's roles, imperial duty, and humanitarian care. It is well suited as supplementary reading for understanding popular writing on the Boer War and women's wartime narratives, and can also be used in comparative literature or colonial history reading. Read it as a historical text rather than pure entertainment, and note its gender assumptions and modes of emotional expression.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read a chapter of preface or background introduction first to grasp the basic outline of the Boer War before entering the main text.
  2. Annotate as you read by connecting the nurse protagonist's situation with women's social roles of the time.
  3. Skim long moral passages and focus on tracking character relationships and changes in battlefield scenes.
  4. After finishing, compare with other women's wartime narratives to compare differences in narrative perspective.

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

FAQ

Is this book nonfiction or a novel? It is a novel set against the Boer War, unfolding through the experiences of a Red Cross nurse. It involves war and nursing scenes, but it is not battlefield reportage or a historical archive, so it should not be used as historical source material.
How difficult is the English, and is it suitable for non-native readers? The original is English from the late 19th to early 20th century, with long sentences and the moral commentary and narrative pauses common at the time. Readers with upper-intermediate English reading ability can attempt it, but may need notes or a translation for support.
Why recommend reading it as a historical text? Because its value lies more in presenting how British society of the time imagined women, imperial duty, and humanitarian care than in the war itself. Reading it with historical context makes the characters' motives and the narrative's tendencies easier to understand.

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About the author

Meade, L. T., 1854-1914 Author

L. T. Meade (1854–1914) was an author of English-language children's and young adult fiction active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Fifty-six of her works are held in this catalogue, suggesting a substantial and widely circulated output. Her representative works include school stories such as A World of Girls: The Story of a School, A Sweet Girl Graduate and Three Girls from School; a mystery-flavoured title, A Master of Mysteries; and stories set among city children, such as Scamp and I: A Story of City By-Ways and A London Baby: The Story of King Roy. Her writing generally centres on girls' growth, school life and family circumstances, with accessible plots that emphasise character and feeling while combining moral instruction with entertainment. Public information is limited, and details of her life, nationality and career cannot be reliably established; this entry describes only the themes and style suggested by the works held here.