Consequences

Delafield, E. M., 1890-1943Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.5

Word count: 586K words
Chapters: 59

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.Consequences by E. M. DelafieldAuthor: Delafield, E. M., 1890-1943,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jan 12, 2011

Editor's review

E. M. Delafield's Consequences returns to the tradition of English fiction centered on family, class, and women's circumstances. Born in 1890 and active between the two world wars, the author often observes with a cool, ironic eye how social norms squeeze individual choice. As a public-domain e-book from Project Gutenberg, the text is highly accessible and works as a piece of the puzzle for understanding the lineage of English women's fiction in the first half of the twentieth century. As you read, note how the narrator handles characters' inner lives and social scenes: it does not rely on strong plot but accumulates a sense of pressure through detail. Readers used to fast-paced genre fiction may need some patience at the start; but if you care about themes like how respectability becomes a shackle, the book's observations will keep resonating. It suits reading in sections during quiet, uninterrupted time, and comparing it with the author's other works will make her enduring concerns clearer.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in twentieth-century English women's fiction and domestic narrative
Literary readers who enjoy social observation and slowly drawn characters
Readers studying public-domain English novels or needing original texts
General readers looking for themes of women's circumstances in classic fiction

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer strong plot and fast-paced genre fiction
Beginners who need a modern colloquial translation or detailed notes
Readers who expect a biographical reading of the author but are unwilling to look up background themselves

Reading tips

Read a few pages first to get a feel for the narrative pace, then decide to read one or two chapters a day.
As you read, note the gaps between what characters say and do in social settings to grasp the irony.
Read alongside short stories or novellas by other twentieth-century English women writers.
If the English original is hard going, sort out the character relationships first, then move into the details.

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

Is this a public-domain e-book, and how demanding is it to read?

It comes from Project Gutenberg and is a freely available public-domain English e-book. The language is English, and the narrative is more a novel of manners than a strong plot, so readers need some stamina for reading English; if you rarely read long English fiction, try the opening pages before deciding to read it through.

Can I read it without knowing the author's background?

Yes. The novel itself does not depend on prior knowledge of the author's life. The available information only shows that the author lived from 1890 to 1943 and that the work is classified as English literature. Just focus on the character relationships and the pressure of social norms; there is no need to read biographical material first.

Is it suitable for course reading or a book club selection?

It can serve as supplementary material for English women's fiction or narratives of social manners, especially for discussing the tension between respectability and personal choice. But public-domain e-books usually lack introductions and notes, so a book club would do well to prepare its own character map and background notes.

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About the author

Delafield, E. M., 1890-1943 Author · British · 1890–1943

E. M. Delafield (1890–1943) was a British novelist, born Edmée Elizabeth Monica de la Pasture. With a delicate yet biting touch, she portrayed the daily lives and emotional predicaments of middle- and upper-class Englishwomen between the two world wars, excelling at diary form and irony to reveal her characters' self-deception and social pressure. Her best-known work, Diary of a Provincial Lady, uses the diary form to depict a country housewife's vanity and anxiety, earning her a place in the tradition of English humorous writing. The library also holds her works The War-Workers, which concerns wartime social roles, and Consequences, which explores a woman's choice between marriage and independence. Public information is limited; her fiction centers on women's circumstances, class manners, and family relations, written in a light tone with an undercurrent of critique, and has influenced later women's writing and satirical fiction.