A Soldier of Virginia: A Tale of Colonel Washington and Braddock's Defeat

Stevenson, Burton Egbert, 1872-1962Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.8
Word count
439K words
Chapters
44

Tags

English Originals War and Military FictionHistorical Fiction Historical AdventureHistorical SceneMilitary StrategyLegendary LivesMilitary CommandersHeroismTest of CouragePatriotismTurbulent EraColonial Turmoil

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 Soldier of Virginia: A Tale of Colonel Washington and Braddock's DefeatAuthor: Stevenson, Burton Egbert, 1872-1962,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Nov 1, 2003

Editor's review

This historical novel follows a young soldier through Colonel Washington and Braddock's failed expedition, weaving frontier marches, Indian ambushes and the making of a colonial officer into a compact, readable narrative. Stevenson is deft at using dialogue and marching detail to recreate the texture of eighteenth-century Virginia militia life; battle scenes rely not on melodrama but on terrain, discipline and morale to build tension. Its value lies not only in the story but in the popular lens it offers on Washington's early military career and Britain's colonial wars. A good introduction to early American historical fiction, and useful for English learners seeking historical vocabulary through narrative. Read it as historical atmosphere rather than strict history, noting how invented characters interlace with real events; a map or background chronology helps.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Skim a brief Braddock expedition chronology first to place characters and events quickly.
  2. Mark fictional protagonists apart from real historical figures; after each chapter, review which episodes are literary invention.
  3. Guess military and colonial terms from context, then look them up after finishing a chapter to keep the narrative flowing.
  4. For language study, close-read battle and march chapters and read the rest for plot.

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

What historical event is this book about? It is set against the eighteenth-century Anglo-French contest for North America, centered on General Braddock's failed expedition. Through a Virginia soldier's experience, the novel links Colonel Washington's early military career, frontier marches and the ambush, making it popular historical fiction built on a factual skeleton.
Is the Washington portrayed here reliable? As historical fiction, its portrait of Washington involves literary invention and should not be used as biographical source material. Treat it as an introductory impression of Washington's early military image, and check specific words and thoughts against formal biographies rather than mistaking novelistic episodes for fact.
How difficult is the English, and is it suitable for self-study? The English is late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century, with long sentences and some military and colonial vocabulary, but the narrative is clear and dialogue is frequent. Readers at CET-4 level or above can manage with a dictionary; read chapter by chapter and note high-frequency historical words. Suitable as extensive reading.

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About the author

Stevenson, Burton Egbert, 1872-1962 Author

Burton Egbert Stevenson (1872–1962) was an American author and anthologist whose biographical details remain limited in publicly available sources. His best-known contribution is the multi-volume poetry anthology The Home Book of Verse, which gathered a large body of English verse for family reading and recitation and has long been regarded as a representative popular anthology of its kind. Beyond editing, he wrote detective and mystery fiction, including The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet, The Holladay Case, and Mysterium Arcae Boulé, whose plots revolve around puzzling cases and reflect the reasoning pleasures of early detective fiction. He also wrote travel sketches such as The Charm of Ireland, recording Irish scenery and travel impressions. Eighteen of his works are held in the collection, spanning poetry anthologies, detective novels, and travel writing, showing that his work combined anthologizing with popular narrative.