A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam', Our Home on the Ocean for Eleven Months

Brassey, Annie, 1839-1887Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.9
Word count
16K words
Chapters
2

Tags

English Originals Travel Human GeographyNature ObservationAdventure JourneyFamily BondsDocumentary NarrativeExotic CultureSocial ObservationVictorian EraFemale 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 Voyage in the 'Sunbeam', Our Home on the Ocean for Eleven Months by Annie BrasseyAuthor: Brassey, Annie, 1839-1887,Language: English, Class: G: Geography, Anthropology, Recreation, Release Date: Jan 31, 2005

Editor's review

This is Annie Brassey's travelogue of eleven months at sea with her family aboard the Sunbeam, a work of geography and travel. Its strength lies in an eyewitness account of nineteenth-century ocean voyaging: life in the cabin, sights along the way, sea weather and the local colour of ports of call—offering both the warmth of family travel and the detail of period travel modes. The prose is plain and readable, suited to light reading in travel literature and the history of life at sea. Read it as a slice of its era, noting how the author arranges family life afloat and observes foreign places, while remaining alert to the period limitations of her perspective. For readers who enjoy travelogues, maritime stories and old ways of travelling, this is an immersive companion volume.

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Reading tips

  1. Read in sections by port of call, reviewing the geographical thread after each.
  2. Mark the ports on a map as you read to strengthen the sense of space and immersion.
  3. Take separate notes on details of family life as material for the history of everyday life.
  4. For extensive reading in English, finish a chapter before looking up words to keep the flow.

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

FAQ

What is this book mainly about? It records the author and her family's eleven months at sea aboard the Sunbeam, covering daily life on board, sights at the ports they called at, and the maritime setting. Readers gain firsthand detail of nineteenth-century ocean travel and of family travel of the time.
Do I need nautical knowledge? No. This is a firsthand travelogue, not a technical manual, and its focus is on lived experience and observation. General readers can begin directly; if curious about the route, consult a map for the ports of call—no prior knowledge of nautical terms is required.
Is it suitable for extensive reading in English? It suits intermediate learners reasonably well for extensive reading. The travelogue's narrative is连贯 and its scenes concrete, which helps sustain momentum. Read a whole chapter before looking up words rather than pausing at every sentence; with older expressions, grasp the gist first and do not insist on exactness for every word.

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About the author

Brassey, Annie, 1839-1887 Author · British · 1839–1887

Annie Brassey (1839–1887) was a British travel writer. She sailed around the world with her husband aboard the yacht Sunbeam and is known for her accounts of seafaring life and colonial experience. Two of her works are held here: A Voyage in the ‘Sunbeam’, Our Home on the Ocean for Eleven Months and The Last Voyage: To India and Australia, in the ‘Sunbeam’. The first recounts the family’s eleven-month life at sea, while the second describes a final voyage to India and Australia. Drawing on her own journeys, she writes plainly and warmly of daily life on board, the places passed along the way and colonial scenes, combining the documentary quality of a travel narrative with the intimacy of family life. Her work preserves a vivid female perspective on nineteenth-century maritime travel writing. Public information about her life is limited, and her reputation rests chiefly on these two voyage accounts.