Better than Play

Florence Mabel Quiller-CouchProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.6

Word count: 213K words
Chapters: 22

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.Better than Play by Mabel Quiller-CouchAuthor: Quiller-Couch, Mabel, 1866?-1924,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Apr 1, 2010

Editor's review

This work comes from the pen of Mabel Quiller-Couch, an English woman writer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and is a typical late-Victorian novel of family and growing up. The Quiller-Couch family had deep ties to the literary world, and her works tend to depict the daily lives, moral choices and emotional development of children and young people in a gentle, finely observed style, with language that is elegant yet never dull. The title Better than Play itself suggests a set of values: between amusement and duty, wilfulness and propriety, the characters must make their own judgments. For contemporary readers its value lies not in strong dramatic conflict but in offering a window onto English family ethics and attitudes toward childhood a century ago. It suits light reading in the original English and also serves as a sample for readers studying late-Victorian popular fiction. The Project Gutenberg edition is easy to search and cite and is the first recourse for anyone wanting low-cost access to this author's work. It is worth reading as a slice of its era, paying attention to the narrator's tone in judging children's behavior, which yields more than simply following the story.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in late-Victorian English children's literature
English learners hoping to improve their feel for the language through light reading in the original
Literary scholars studying late-nineteenth-century family ethics and attitudes toward childhood
Readers who enjoy calm pacing and narratives rich in everyday detail

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking strong plots, fast pacing or suspenseful twists
Beginners who need a modern Chinese translation or annotated edition to read comfortably
Readers impatient with old-fashioned narration carrying a heavy religious or moralizing tone

Reading tips

Read through once to grasp the relationships between characters, then revisit the narrator's wording when judging children's behavior
Keep a vocabulary notebook for old-fashioned expressions related to family, etiquette and games
Read alongside other late-Victorian children's novels to observe shared themes
If using it for research, consult the author's biography and publishing background of the period as well

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 in Chinese or English?

According to the source data, the book's language is English; it is an English e-book released by Project Gutenberg, with the original English text and no accompanying Chinese translation. Chinese readers will need some English reading ability, or a dictionary and other aids.

Who was the author, Mabel Quiller-Couch?

The data identifies her only as an author of 1866?–1924, with the birth year uncertain, and classifies the work under PR (Language and Literatures: English literature). She was an English writer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; this data provides no further biographical detail, so readers wanting more should consult reliable biographical sources separately.

What are the features of the Project Gutenberg edition?

Project Gutenberg is the earliest project to provide free e-books, founded by Michael Hart in 1971. This edition is a free electronic text that is easy to download, search and cite, but it usually contains no modern editorial notes and has plain typography, so readers should bring their own reading tools.

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About the author

Florence Mabel Quiller-Couch Author · English

Mabel Quiller-Couch (Quiller-Couch, Mabel, 1866?–1924) was a British writer and editor of children's literature, born in Bodmin, Cornwall, and the sister of the literary critic Arthur Quiller-Couch. She co-wrote several works with her sister Lilian and was also a prolific independent author; nine of her works are held in this collection, mostly centring on children's growth and character formation and commonly classified as inspirational coming-of-age stories. Her representative titles include Paul the Courageous, Kitty Trenire, The Carroll Girls, Cornwall's Wonderland, Dick and Brownie, The Story of Jessie, Better than Play, and The Making of Mona, and she also compiled an anthology of children's poetry. Her writing is gentle and plain, using everyday stories to convey courage and kindness, and found a readership among children's books of her time. Public information on her education and detailed life is limited. She died in 1924.