Bad Hugh cover

Bad Hugh

Rating 3.0
Word count
720K words
Chapters
72

Tags

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.Bad Hugh by Mary Jane HolmesAuthor: Holmes, Mary Jane, 1825-1907,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Sep 5, 2005

Editor's review

Bad Hugh is a work by nineteenth-century American popular novelist Mary Jane Holmes, presented by Project Gutenberg as a free ebook. Holmes was skilled in domestic and sentimental narrative; this book revolves around the fate of its protagonist Hugh and carries the moral exhortation and melodramatic coloring popular in its time. For readers studying nineteenth-century American popular literature and the domestic novel tradition, it offers an analyzable textual sample; for general readers, it is more a window onto old reading tastes, with narrative pace and attitudes bearing clear marks of its era. It is worth reading in the context of American women's writing and popular publishing history, attending to the moral framework and social imagination behind the characterization. As a public-domain ebook, it preserves the original English text, suitable for reading in the original or comparing with similar works.

Who it's for

A good fit for

  • Literary scholars studying nineteenth-century American popular fiction and domestic narrative
  • English learners wanting to sample old reading tastes through public-domain English originals
  • Readers of literature and history interested in women writers and popular publishing history

Not a good fit for

  • Contemporary genre-fiction readers expecting modern pacing and strong plot twists
  • Readers who need a Chinese translation or annotations to read the English original smoothly

Reading tips

  1. Read a chapter or two to get a feel for the narrative tone before deciding whether to read it all, avoiding judging it by contemporary standards.
  2. Read alongside background material on nineteenth-century American domestic fiction to understand its moral narrative framework.
  3. As an English original, mark unfamiliar expressions first and look them up after finishing a chapter.

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
  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

FAQ

Is this book in Chinese or English?
This is an English public-domain ebook released by Project Gutenberg, with the original English text and no Chinese translation. Chinese readers need some English reading ability or should use it as English original reading material.
Is it suitable for literary research?
It can serve as a research text for nineteenth-century American popular fiction and domestic narrative, but should be read alongside background on the publishing environment and women's writing traditions of the time. It is better as a case text than as a standalone canonical must-read.
What should I pay attention to when reading?
The attitudes and narrative pace carry clear marks of their era; read with historical awareness, attending to its moral exhortation structure and characterization rather than measuring it by the expectations of contemporary genre fiction.

Comments

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About the author

Mary Jane Holmes (1825–1907) was a popular nineteenth-century American novelist who found a wide readership in her day. Public information about her early life and education is limited, but her output was considerable: this site holds twenty-one of her works, which suggests how active she was in the book market and among readers of her time. Her representative novels include The English Orphans, ‘Lena Rivers, Bad Hugh, Family Pride, Cousin Maude, Maggie Miller, Gretchen, and Tempest and Sunshine. These stories are mostly drawn from domestic life and emotional entanglements, often turning on orphaned origins, family ties, pride and suffering, secrets and reconciliation. Their plots are eventful, their tone gentle, and their sensibility plainly sentimental and moralizing. Written for a broad popular audience and especially welcomed by women readers, her novels offer a useful window onto the character of nineteenth-century American popular fiction.

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