An English Garner: Ingatherings from Our History and Literature

Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.4
Word count
968K words
Chapters
97

Tags

English Originals History and Culture Historical GleaningsAcademic StudyDocumentary AnthologyRare TextPoetry and ProseTraditional AestheticsCultural ChangeSocial ObservationFolk CustomsBritish Literature

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.An English Garner: Ingatherings from Our History and Literature (8 of 8) by ArberAuthor: ,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jul 22, 2016

Editor's review

This is the eighth of the eight volumes of An English Garner, a collection of extracts from English history and literature, released in electronic form by Project Gutenberg. Its value lies not in offering a systematic general history or complete works, but in gathering into one volume fragments of English texts from different periods and genres, letting readers sense the shifts in style of English literary and historical writing as if leafing through an old scrapbook. The excerpt format means the main barrier to reading comes from archaic spelling and historical context rather than length. For researchers it is a convenient entry point for tracing obscure textual leads; for general readers it is better suited to casual browsing, taking one or two excerpts of interest at a time rather than aiming to read it through. Note that this is the eighth volume; read alone it cannot give the full picture of the whole collection, and it works better alongside other volumes or related titles.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Start by browsing the table of contents or excerpt titles, pick two or three that interest you, and get a feel for the format.
  2. Jot down unfamiliar names, events, and spellings as you read, and look them up together afterward.
  3. You need not read the whole book; use it as a collection of excerpts to return to.
  4. If using it for research, record the source information for each excerpt so you can trace the original text.

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
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  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
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  30. 30
  31. 31
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  33. 33
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  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
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  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
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  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
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  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82
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  92. 92
  93. 93
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  95. 95
  96. 96
  97. 97

FAQ

Is this book a complete literary work or a collection of excerpts? It is a collection of excerpts. An English Garner is itself a work that gathers fragments of history and literature, and this is the eighth volume, containing selected excerpts rather than complete works. Read it as an anthology of extracts, not as a single complete work.
Why does the language feel distant when reading? Because most excerpts come from earlier periods of English, retaining old spellings, syntax, and historical context. This distance is itself one of the book's features, letting readers sense the historical changes in English style; when you hit obstacles, don't force a word-by-word understanding.
Can I read only the eighth volume? Yes, it can be read on its own, since the excerpts are independent of one another. But the eighth volume is only part of the whole collection, and reading it alone cannot give the full picture. To understand the collection's scope, it is best to consult other volumes or related titles alongside it.

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

Project Gutenberg Author

Project Gutenberg is not a single author but a nonprofit digital library founded by Michael Hart in 1971 and one of the world's earliest free ebook platforms. It relies on volunteers to digitize, proofread, and freely distribute public-domain works and is now operated by the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Its collection contains 2,692 works, mainly religious texts, epics, and story collections, including the King James Bible and the Douay-Rheims volumes, the epic Mahabharata, a literal translation of the Arabian Nights, and Danish editions of the Old and New Testaments. Public information is limited, and its nature is closer to a public-interest compiling and dissemination body; these texts are open to the public, easy to consult and circulate, and have had a profound influence on the spread of ebooks and the preservation of public-domain resources.