Branded

Lynde, Francis, 1856-1930Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.0

Word count: 423K words
Chapters: 43

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.Branded by Francis LyndeAuthor: Lynde, Francis, 1856-1930,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Oct 5, 2006

Editor's review

Branded is an old English novel by Francis Lynde, classed under American and Canadian literature and now circulating free as a public-domain e-book on Project Gutenberg. Lynde's work is typically plot-driven, and this novel preserves the pace and idiom of popular narrative from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century: dialogue moves quickly, scenes shift directly, and it serves as a sample of what popular English fiction of that era looked like. Its value lies not in classic status in literary history but in offering a window onto how old serial fiction told stories: clear motivations, external conflict, and hooks at the end of chapters. For reading situations, it suits reading several chapters at a stretch on an e-device during a commute or in spare moments; it also works as extensive reading material for English learners, building old-fashioned expressions within a familiar plot framework. Note that public-domain e-book texts come from scanning and proofreading and occasionally have formatting flaws; do not fret over individual formatting issues.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Learners who want to build old-fashioned English expressions through extensive reading in the original
Readers interested in American popular fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
People who habitually read public-domain books in fragments on electronic devices
Readers who want a straightforward, undemanding English novel for diversion

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting contemporary pacing and contemporary issues
Readers who want only literary-history classics and will not try popular work
People sensitive to formatting flaws in public-domain e-books

Reading tips

Read the first three chapters to grasp the main characters and central conflict, then decide whether to continue.
Do not look up every old-fashioned expression; read for the plot first and sort vocabulary later.
Pair it with an audiobook or read-aloud tool to lower the barrier of old-fashioned syntax.
After every few chapters, summarize the plot in one sentence to check that you are following the narrative logic.

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

What English level does this book roughly require?

It is old popular fiction, with sentences somewhat longer than in contemporary popular reading, but the plot is straightforward and vocabulary repeats often, so intermediate readers can attempt it. Old usages may slow you at first, but after two or three chapters you usually adapt to the pace.

Will formatting problems in the e-text interfere with reading?

Public-domain e-books come from scanned and proofread texts and may contain line breaks, punctuation, or occasional character errors, but these generally do not hinder understanding of the main plot. If you hit an obviously garbled passage, skip it and read on; there is no need to correct every instance.

Why is this book classed under American and Canadian literature?

Its Project Gutenberg classification is PS, i.e., American and Canadian literature under Language and Literatures. Francis Lynde was an American writer, and the work belongs to that literary tradition, hence the classification.

Comments

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About the author

Lynde, Francis, 1856-1930 Author

Francis Lynde (1856–1930) is a writer about whom little biographical information is publicly available; only his name and dates can be confirmed. The library holds 17 of his works, including The City of Numbered Days, The Grafters, A Romance in Transit, The King of Arcadia, The Wreckers, A Fool for Love, The Price, and Branded. Judging from these titles, his fiction tends to center on engineering projects, business dealings, travel, and emotional entanglements, with a flavor of social realism and adventure narrative, often placing characters in conflicts of interest and moral dilemmas. Given the limited public record, his nationality, education, and personal history cannot be reliably established, and scholarly discussion of his literary standing is sparse. Nevertheless, his substantial output of popular fiction offers useful material for studying the reading tastes of the English-speaking world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and some of his works remain in print and retain interest for readers today.