Abijah‘s Bubble

Smith, Francis Hopkinson, 1838-1915Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.1

Word count: 35K words
Chapters: 4

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.Abijah's Bubble by Francis Hopkinson SmithAuthor: Smith, Francis Hopkinson, 1838-1915,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Dec 3, 2007

Editor's review

Abijah's Bubble comes from the American writer Francis Hopkinson Smith, an author of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries known for depicting ordinary people's circumstances and the changes of the era in a gentle, humorous tone. The book survives through Project Gutenberg's public-domain electronic text; what readers gain is not only a story but a literary sample for understanding the social mood and commercial fever of America's Gilded Age. The image of the "bubble" can be read as concrete economic speculation or extended to mean a character's illusions and persistence in life; it reads lightly yet leaves something to linger over. For readers used to modern fast-paced narrative, its language and rhythm may feel rather unhurried, but precisely for that reason it suits quiet moments of slow reading, to feel the warmth of old-style storytelling. As a public-domain book, it is short and freely available, making it a good entry attempt at reading English originals, and also suitable for literary enthusiasts doing thematic reading by author or era.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who want to practice reading English originals with a short public-domain text
Readers interested in late nineteenth-century American social life and commercial themes
Lovers of traditional narrative with gentle humor and finely drawn characters
Teachers and organizers who need free electronic texts for classes or reading groups

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer strong plots, fast-paced modern fiction, or suspenseful thrills
Beginners who need detailed annotations and background guides to read an English original
Researchers hoping to gain systematic economic or historical knowledge from the book

Reading tips

Read through once to grasp the story's direction, then on a second pass watch for the recurring image of the "bubble" in the plot.
Note unfamiliar period expressions and commercial terms as you read, and look them up together afterward.
Read it alongside other Gilded Age short stories to see how similar material is handled differently.
If used for a reading group, design a discussion question around the boundary between "illusion and speculation."

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 English beginners to read directly?

Not really for complete beginners. The text is in the original English and carries late nineteenth-century habits of expression, with rather long sentences and many period words. It suits readers with some foundation in English reading who are willing to look up words and accept slow reading; beginners may first read a Chinese translation or introductory materials, then try the original.

Does "bubble" refer to economic speculation?

The "bubble" in the title has open meanings. Given the author's era, it readily suggests commercial speculation and unrealistic schemes, but at the story level it can also be understood as a character's illusions and obsessions about life. Readers need not limit it to a single economic metaphor; they can interpret it for themselves through the characters' fates.

What is the reading experience of a public-domain ebook like?

This book comes from Project Gutenberg; its advantages are that it is free, complete, and easy to search and copy, while its shortcomings are that it usually lacks the polished layout of modern typography and detailed annotations. It is advisable to use reading software that supports adjustable font size and background color, together with dictionary tools, for a more comfortable reading experience.

Comments

Find this book

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

Smith, Francis Hopkinson, 1838-1915 Author

Francis Hopkinson Smith (1838–1915) was an American author whose biographical details are only sparsely documented in public sources. The library holds twenty-six of his works, including novels and short stories, with representative titles such as Colonel Carter's Christmas, Forty Minutes Late, Felix O'Day, The Tides of Barnegat, and A Gentleman's Gentleman. These works show that he excelled at depicting, in a gentle and humorous vein, the daily life of upper-class English and American society and the Southern gentlemanly class, with plots often revolving around etiquette, family relations, and character, conveying both the warmth and the irony of an old-fashioned genteel world. His writings occupy a place in early twentieth-century American popular literature, and some of his stories were widely read.