Cleopatra — Complete cover

Cleopatra — Complete

Rating 3.7
Word count
803K words
Chapters
81

Tags

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. Cleopatra — Complete by Georg Ebers. Author: Ebers, Georg, 1837-1898. Language: English. Class: PT: Language and Literatures: Germanic, Scandinavian, and Icelandic literatures. Release Date: Nov 15, 2004.

Editor's review

This is the complete edition of German writer Georg Ebers's long historical novel about Cleopatra, the last queen of ancient Egypt, released free by Project Gutenberg. Ebers was a major nineteenth-century historical novelist, skilled at unfolding character fates and the spirit of an era on a foundation of solid historical research. The book places Cleopatra within the grand backdrop of the power struggle between Rome and Egypt, offering both court intrigue and battle scenes as well as delicate emotional and psychological portraiture; it can serve as a sample for understanding the style of nineteenth-century historical fiction. The English original is lengthy, its prose bearing traces of translation from nineteenth-century German literature, and its pace is slow, making it better suited to readers willing to read closely. It is suitable as extended reading in foreign historical fiction, or as selected reading when studying the narrative of long English novels; if you merely want a quick overview of Cleopatra's life, this is not the book to start with.

Who it's for

A good fit for

  • Readers who enjoy novels set in ancient Egyptian and Roman history
  • Literature enthusiasts studying the narrative style of nineteenth-century historical fiction
  • Learners hoping to expand their long-form reading through English originals
  • Readers interested in the evolution of Cleopatra's image

Not a good fit for

  • Beginners who only want a quick factual account of Cleopatra's life
  • Readers who prefer fast-paced modern narrative and lack patience
  • Beginners whose English reading ability is not yet sufficient for nineteenth-century long sentences

Reading tips

  1. Read some historical background first, then enter the novel, to grasp character relationships and political alignments more quickly.
  2. Progress chapter by chapter and note characters' identities as you go, to avoid confusion from the many roles affecting the reading experience.
  3. For lengthy descriptions, first read through the main plot, then revisit details and psychological portrayal on a second pass.

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
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81

FAQ

Is this book a historical work or a novel?
It is a historical novel by Ebers, set against the backdrop of Cleopatra's era, with literary invention within a framework of historical fact. It is suited to experiencing the atmosphere of the era and the characters' fates, and should not be used as strict historical reference material.
How difficult is the English, and what level is needed?
The original is nineteenth-century-style English, with long sentences and dense description, and rather literary vocabulary. It is advisable to attempt it after gaining fairly stable experience with long-form English reading; otherwise the slow pace may lead to giving up midway.
What is the difference between the complete edition and the volume editions?
The complete edition contains the entire book, while the volume editions are released split by volume. If you want continuous reading and to grasp the overall structure, the complete edition is more suitable; if you only want to sample or read in segments, you can start with the volume editions.

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About the author

Georg Moritz Ebers Author · German · 1837–1898

Georg Ebers (1837–1898) was a German Egyptologist and novelist. Born in Berlin in 1837, he served as a professor at the University of Leipzig. His major contribution to Egyptology was the discovery, editing, and publication of the famous Ebers Papyrus, which provided valuable material for the study of ancient medical texts. At the same time, he devoted himself to spreading Egyptological knowledge through literature, writing historical novels such as An Egyptian Princess and Uarda. These works weave the social life and historical settings of ancient Egypt into their narratives, making specialized scholarship more accessible to general readers. His works number 172 in the library's collection, including the serialized volumes of An Egyptian Princess and Cleopatra, which shows how widely his historical novels circulated. Overall, Ebers combined scholarly rigor with a novelist's gift for popular expression, occupying a distinctive place in the popularization of Egyptology in the nineteenth century.

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