Certain Delightful English Towns, with Glimpses of the Pleasant Country Between

Howells, William Dean, 1837-1920Project Gutenberg · United StatesMar 2023

Rating 3.2
Word count
512K words
Chapters
52

Tags

Motivation and Growth Human GeographySlow ReadingDaily ReflectionsHeartwarming Narrative19th Century

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.

Certain delightful English towns, with glimpses of the pleasant country between

Author: Howells, William Dean, 1837-1920,Language: English, Class: DA: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Great Britain, Ireland, Central Europe, Release Date: Dec 26, 2018

Editor's review

Howells, viewing England as both novelist and critic, turns its towns into a walkable literary landscape. He is not content to list landmarks; he notices church bells, the slope of streets, inn signs and the rural stretches between, so that town and country comment on each other. His observations of architectural detail and local character carry the unhurried curiosity of a late-nineteenth-century traveler, suited to slow reading rather than reference. For readers who want to feel the texture of English places through literary essays, this book offers more to savor than any guidebook, and it works as an evocative supplement to histories of English towns and architecture. Note that the original is in English and written long ago, so some social observations bear the marks of their era; readers should take them with historical perspective.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read town by town, marking each location and its country route on a map as you finish a chapter
  2. Keep notes on recurring architectural details and street imagery to build your own observation journal
  3. Read alongside an introductory history of English towns or architecture, distinguishing literary description from fact
  4. Do not feel obliged to read straight through; start with towns relevant to your travel plans, then extend to the rural chapters

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

FAQ

Is this a practical travel guide? No. It is closer to a literary travel essay, focused on the character of towns, architectural detail and impressions of the countryside between them; it gives no practical information on transport, lodging or tickets. For travel, use it to set the mood before a trip or to linger over afterward, not as an on-site reference.
How difficult is the English, and is it suitable for non-native readers? The original is in English and written long ago, with leisurely, expansive sentences and vocabulary touching on architecture and local scenery. Readers with university-level English can work through it slowly with a dictionary; for a smoother experience, begin with the town chapters that interest you rather than forcing your way from page one.
Do the book's observations reflect the limitations of their time? Yes. The author wrote in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and some social observations and formulations carry the perspective and marks of a traveler of that era. Read the descriptions as historical texts: appreciate the literary sensibility while keeping a critical eye on judgments about social class.

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About the author

Howells, William Dean, 1837-1920 Author

William Dean Howells (1837–1920) was an American author and literary editor, with 107 works held in the collection. His writing spans novels, travel books, memoirs, and literary essays, and his representative works include My Mark Twain, Indian Summer, A Boy's Town, A Modern Instance, and A Hazard of New Fortunes. Howells drew on close observation of everyday life, writing in a plain style with gentle irony and attending to moral questions and human situations amid social change; his travel book Venetian Life and his memoir Literary Friends and Acquaintance record his journeys and personal recollections of American literary figures. Public information is limited, so biographical details are not elaborated here; readers may turn to the works above to learn about his subjects and style.