All for a Scrap of Paper: A Romance of the Present War

Hocking, Joseph, 1860-1937Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.7
Word count
429K words
Chapters
43

Tags

English Originals Romance FictionWar and Military Fiction Wartime StrugglePortrait GalleryLove EntanglementsHeroismHour of CrisisPatriotismMoral DilemmaPopular NarrativeTurbulent EraSocial Observation

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. All for a Scrap of Paper: A Romance of the Present War by Joseph Hocking. Author: Hocking, Joseph, 1860-1937. Language: English. Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature. Release Date: Apr 23, 2008

Editor's review

This novel by the prolific British author Joseph Hocking is set against the First World War and spins a story of love and fate around a scrap of paper—most likely alluding to the war's ostensible trigger, much discussed at the time. Hocking excelled at embedding moral and religious tension in popular narrative; the book offers both the tension of wartime atmosphere and the pull of a love story, and will suit readers who want to sense early twentieth-century British social attitudes and war narrative through fiction. As a free Project Gutenberg eBook, it is easy to obtain, suited to fragmented reading on electronic devices, and useful as supplementary material on popular fiction and war themes in English literature courses. Note that the work bears the marks of its era, and its presentation of war is distant from today's perspective; read it with historical awareness, as a window onto popular reading tastes of the time rather than a work of military history.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Learn a little about the historical background of the "scrap of paper" around the outbreak of WWI before starting; the title's meaning will be clearer.
  2. Trace the love story and the wartime situation separately, and observe how the author uses private emotion to carry public issues.
  3. When reading the English original, mark unfamiliar wartime vocabulary and look it up after finishing, balancing language study with plot momentum.
  4. For a course or reading group, pair it with other war-themed popular novels of the same period for comparison.

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

FAQ

Is this a work of history or a novel? It is a novel; the subtitle identifies it as a "Romance," using war as a backdrop for a story of love and human fate. It is not a work of military history or a collection of historical sources, and should be read as literature rather than as historical evidence.
What does the "scrap of paper" in the title refer to? The title echoes the contemporary rhetoric that the war arose from a scrap of paper—a treaty or document. Its precise reference emerges from the plot; it functions more as a symbolic phrase, prompting readers to consider how a seemingly trivial document can set off enormous conflict.
How difficult is the English, and what level of reader is it for? Written in the early twentieth century, the book has period features in syntax and vocabulary, though it is overall popular-fiction prose. Readers with college-level English or a habit of reading novels in the original will find it easy to enter; beginners can use a dictionary or a guide.
Why recommend the Project Gutenberg edition? This edition is a free public-domain eBook, easy to obtain and convenient to read on a computer, phone, or e-reader; its public-domain status also makes it easy to quote and use in teaching. Note, however, that the text is the English original, with no modern annotations or Chinese translation.

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About the author

Hocking, Joseph, 1860-1937 Author

Joseph Hocking (1860-1937) was an English writer active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Public information about his life and nationality is limited, and the library currently holds twelve of his works. The surviving titles suggest a prolific author with wide-ranging subjects. Representative works include The Day of Judgment, The Everlasting Arms, The Weapons of Mystery and The Man Who Rose Again, alongside Mistress Nancy Molesworth: A Tale of Adventure, Tommy, The Birthright and The Pomp of Yesterday. The titles point to a blend of adventure stories, suspenseful plots and moral or religious themes, with brisk narration and characters often placed amid tests and choices. His fiction combines the readability of popular novels with serious concerns, and may interest readers of late Victorian and Edwardian popular English literature.