Barry Lyndon

Thackeray, William Makepeace, 1811-1863Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

4.4

Word count: 693K words
Chapters: 70

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.Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace ThackerayAuthor: Thackeray, William Makepeace, 1811-1863,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Oct 1, 2003

Editor's review

Barry Lyndon is an early pseudo-memoir novel by Thackeray, narrated by the young Irishman Redmond Barry, tracing how he rises and falls in European high society through gambling, marriage, and scheming. In the same vein as Vanity Fair, Thackeray uses a cool, even caustic tone to expose the calculation behind respectability, making the gap between the narrator's self-flattery and the facts a source of reading pleasure. The book's value lies in its being both a dismantling of the "gentleman myth" by the 19th-century English novel and an introductory text for understanding Thackeray's moral irony. The Project Gutenberg edition is a public-domain English ebook, suitable for reading straight through on an electronic device. As you read, watch for the cracks in the narrator's tone: the more vehemently he protests, the more you should be on guard. It works well as supplementary reading for a course on the English novel or for anyone interested in Victorian literature.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in the 19th-century English novel and Victorian literature
Readers who enjoy unreliable narrators and antihero protagonists
Students who need a public-domain English text for course reading or textual analysis
Readers who want to understand Thackeray's satirical style beyond Vanity Fair

Not a good fit for

Readers hoping for an uplifting or warmly sentimental story
Beginners whose English reading is not yet fluent and who need Chinese annotations
Readers who prefer fast-paced plots and lack patience for memoir-style narration

Reading tips

Read a few chapters first to get used to the 18th-century setting and the narrator's voice, then read straight through
Mark Barry's self-justifications as you go, and revisit their contradictions after finishing
Compare with Kubrick's film adaptation of the same name to see what the novel and the film each choose to keep or cut
For course reading, focus on organizing the key events of each change in Barry's social status

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

How difficult is the English in this book?

The original is 19th-century English with long sentences and vocabulary of 18th-century social and military life, making it moderately to considerably difficult. Readers with some grounding in English fiction can read it through with an electronic dictionary; beginners are advised to read a Chinese translation or introductory material first before tackling the original.

Can I read this directly without having read other works by Thackeray?

Yes. The plot is relatively self-contained and does not depend on other works. Still, if you first become familiar with Thackeray's satirical treatment of high society in Vanity Fair, it will be easier to appreciate the irony behind the narrator's self-flattery here.

What ebook format is this edition?

This is a public-domain English ebook provided by Project Gutenberg, a free electronic text usually available for download in multiple formats from its website. For the specific layout and file format, refer to the page description at the time of access; the content is Thackeray's original English text.

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About the author

Thackeray, William Makepeace, 1811-1863 Author

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) was a nineteenth-century British novelist. Publicly available details of his life are limited, so this entry relies mainly on the 42 works held in the collection and their representative titles. Among them, Vanity Fair is the best known, offering a satirical portrait of society; Barry Lyndon, The History of Pendennis and Henry Esmond are also representative works. Thackeray is known for depicting human weaknesses and social manners in a humorous yet coolly observant tone, with unhurried narration and understated irony. The collection includes novels as well as essays and lectures, giving readers a sense of his writing and of the style of Victorian fiction.