Chimes of Mission Bells: An Historical Sketch of California and Her Missions

Field, Maria Antonia, 1885-Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.8
Word count
134K words
Chapters
14

Tags

English Originals World HistoryReligion Human GeographyDocumentary NarrativeCultural ChangeSocial ObservationFolk Customs

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.Chimes of Mission Bells; an historical sketch of California and her missionsAuthor: Field, Maria Antonia, 1885-,Language: English, Class: F850.5: United States local history: Pacific States, Release Date: Nov 1, 2004

Editor's review

Maria Antonia Field's historical sketch of California's missions uses the image of bells to link the establishment and transformation of the California mission system during the Spanish colonial period. The book is concise, and its prose carries the lyrical tone of early twentieth-century local history writing; it focuses on the distribution, architecture, and religious life of the missions rather than rigorous socioeconomic analysis. For readers who want a quick overview of California's missions or who plan to visit them, it is a light introductory read; for researchers who need a critical examination of the colonial legacy, it must be paired with modern scholarship, with attention to the author's standpoint and the limitations of her time. The English public-domain e-book makes it easy to look up place names and mission names, and it serves well as background reading before a trip or as supplementary material for a local history topic.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Mark the location of each mission on a California map to establish a spatial order before reading the text.
  2. Distinguish the author's period standpoint from historical description as you read, and mark evaluative statements.
  3. Read alongside a modern work on California colonial history to fill in social and economic background.
  4. If using it for travel, read chapter by chapter along your route and compare the book's descriptions with what you observe on site.

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

FAQ

Is this book suitable reading before a trip to California? It works well as light background reading. It is short and centered on the missions, helping readers form a general impression and a sense of place names. But it is not a travel guide and lacks practical information such as opening hours and routes; prepare a guidebook separately and compare the book's descriptions with what you see on site.
Is the book's account of the missions objective? This is an early twentieth-century local history sketch with a lyrical and approving tendency toward the missions and religious life, and it says little about the indigenous costs of the colonial system. Readers should treat it as a period text rather than a neutral assessment and preferably compare it with modern scholarship to form a fuller judgment.
How high is the English reading threshold? Overall it is not high. The sentences are somewhat traditional and include the ornamental expressions of local history writing; proper names are numerous but recur, so they become familiar after a few chapters. General English reading ability is enough to make progress; look up architectural and religious terms in a dictionary as needed. It suits fragmented, chapter-by-chapter reading.
Is the content too shallow because the book is short? Its purpose is a historical sketch, aiming at an overview rather than depth, so one should not expect a complete chronology or socioeconomic analysis. If you only need a basic impression of California's missions and the main sites and their features, the short length is an advantage; for specialized research, more systematic scholarly works are needed.

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About the author

Field, Maria Antonia, 1885- Author · 1885

Maria Antonia Field (born 1885) is an author about whom relatively little is publicly known; details of her life, nationality, and dates of death remain unclear, and the only confirmed fact is her birth in 1885. One work by her is held in the collection: Chimes of Mission Bells: An Historical Sketch of California and Her Missions. Judging from its title and subject, the book concerns the history of California and its missions, belonging to a genre that intersects local history and religious history, and presenting the development and character of early California mission institutions in the form of a historical sketch. Works of this kind are often regarded as popular introductions to California's colonial period and mission system, offering some value for the general diffusion of historical knowledge. Given the limited public information, further research is needed on the details of her life, her writing context, and any other works.