Comrades: A Story of Social Adventure in California

Dixon, Thomas, Jr., 1864-1946Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.2

Word count: 358K words
Chapters: 36

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.Comrades: A Story of Social Adventure in California by Jr. Thomas DixonAuthor: Dixon, Thomas, Jr., 1864-1946,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Mar 1, 2011

Editor's review

Comrades: A Story of Social Adventure in California is a social novel by Thomas Dixon; the words "comrades" and "social adventure" in the title signal the work's attention to collective ideals, cooperative experiments, and human conflict. Set in California, the story tests social visions within concrete personal relationships and everyday situations, combining plot momentum with room for readers to reflect on the relationship between institutions and human nature. As a Project Gutenberg public-domain ebook, it preserves the face of early twentieth-century American social fiction and has reference value for understanding the social imagination and narrative tastes of the time. While reading, pay attention to how the author sets up the gap between ideals and reality, and how characters choose within the collective. The book is better suited to readers with an interest in literary history or social thought than to those seeking light entertainment.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in American social fiction and the history of social thought
Students and scholars studying early twentieth-century American literature and California writing
Readers who like reading with questions and analyzing the relationship between characters and institutions
Teachers needing public-domain English texts for course materials or research samples

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking light entertainment and fast-paced plots
Readers with little English reading experience who are intimidated by long sentences and discursive prose
Readers with no interest in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American social background

Reading tips

Read the preface or first few chapters first to understand the setup of the social experiment, then follow the character threads.
Take notes on characters' positions and group relationships as you read to grasp how the conflict develops.
Compare the book's social vision with today's reality and write down your questions and judgments.
If the English is difficult, read chapter summaries first and then return to the original text to reduce the burden of understanding.

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 does "Comrades" in the title refer to?

From the title and subtitle, it points to a social experiment based on partnership or community ideals. The specific reference should be understood in light of the organizations and actions of the characters in the book; readers can pay attention to how the group forms and faces disagreement rather than applying a single preexisting interpretation.

Is this book similar in style to the author's other works?

The information only shows that the author is Thomas Dixon Jr. and gives his birth and death years; no comparison with other works is provided. What is certain is that this book is a public-domain work of American literature with a social-issue dimension. To compare, one would need to consult reliable introductions to his other works separately.

What should I note when reading it as a public-domain ebook?

The Project Gutenberg edition focuses on free access and text preservation and usually lacks a modern editor's introduction and detailed notes. Readers may need to supplement the historical background themselves and look up unfamiliar institutions or place names for a fuller understanding.

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

Dixon, Thomas, Jr., 1864-1946 Author

Thomas Dixon, Jr. (1864-1946) was an American writer whose biography and education are limited in publicly available sources; he is known chiefly for his novels set against the American Civil War and Reconstruction. The library holds fourteen of his works, including representative titles such as The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, The Sins of the Father: A Romance of the South, The Southerner: A Romance of the Real Lincoln, and The Man in Gray: A Romance of North and South. Judging from these titles and themes, his writing centers on Southern historical romance and biographical narratives about political figures such as Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, alongside social fiction and drama. His works were popular in the early twentieth century, and The Clansman was later adapted into an influential film, leaving a complex and controversial mark on American racial attitudes of the time.