Bothwell or, The Days of Mary Queen of Scots, Volume 3

Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
336K words
Chapters
34

Tags

English Originals Historical Fiction Portrait GalleryFate and FortuneCourt IntrigueLove EntanglementsPower GameMary Queen of ScotsRoyal DramaComplex HumanityTurbulent EraScottish Court

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.Bothwell; or, The Days of Mary Queen of Scots, Volume 3 (of 3) by James GrantAuthor: ,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Sep 11, 2017

Editor's review

This is the final volume of a three-volume historical novel, tasked with drawing the whole work to a close, resolving the characters' fates and tracing the direction of the political situation. Compared with the first two volumes, this one concentrates more on the outbreak and aftermath of conflict, bringing the tensions accumulated earlier to clarity; here readers can see the various threads gathered together. James Grant continues the narrative manner of nineteenth-century historical fiction, with scene description and dialogue serving the dramatic conclusion, and the plot advancing with a plainly popular-literary appeal. As a public-domain ebook, the text is preserved as it stands: it allows general readers to experience in full the rise, development, turn and resolution of an old-style historical novel, and it also suits readers studying the narrative structure of English popular literature as a sample. It is best to have finished the first two volumes before reading this one; otherwise the characters' motives and the causal chain of events will be hard to grasp fully. Read it as the landing point of the whole trilogy, attending to how the author arranges the ending and evaluates the historical figures, and noting the historical outlook and the limitations of its era.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Be sure to finish the first two volumes first; the final volume's character fates and causal chain depend on earlier groundwork.
  2. While reading, note how the author handles the evaluation of historical figures, distinguishing the novel's stance from historical fact.
  3. You may compare relevant historical materials on Mary Queen of Scots' later years to appreciate the novel's choices and adaptations.
  4. After finishing, review the overall structure of the three volumes and sort out how the main conflict rises, falls and is resolved.

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

FAQ

Does the final volume resolve the fates of all the main characters? As the concluding work of a three-volume set, this volume concentrates on resolving the main conflicts and the characters' destinations, gathering the threads laid in the first two volumes. The specific arrangements require readers to discover them through reading; it is not appropriate to presuppose details apart from the text.
How difficult is the English in this book? The text preserves the original nineteenth-century English of a historical novel, with longer sentences and older vocabulary, posing some difficulty for non-native readers. It is better suited to those with upper-intermediate English reading ability, who may read with a dictionary and background materials.
Does the public-domain ebook include notes or an introduction? The Project Gutenberg edition mainly provides the original text and usually contains no modern introduction, annotations or background explanation. Readers who need historical background may consult relevant historical materials and reference works separately.

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.