Constance Sherwood: An Autobiography of the Sixteenth Century

Fullerton, Georgiana, 1812-1885Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
1M words
Chapters
102

Tags

English Originals Historical Fiction Historical ReappraisalPortrait GalleryLove EntanglementsComplex HumanityPsychological InsightTender SentimentMoral DilemmaTraditional AestheticsFemale Perspective

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.Constance Sherwood: An Autobiography of the Sixteenth Century by FullertonAuthor: Fullerton, Georgiana, 1812-1885,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jul 7, 2012

Editor's review

Constance Sherwood is set in the sixteenth century and told as an autobiography, with the protagonist Constance Sherwood recounting her own experiences. The author, Georgiana Fullerton, was a nineteenth-century English novelist, and this work follows the tradition of historical fiction that uses individual lives to reflect the spirit of an age: family ties, religious faith, and court politics are interwoven, and private memory and public events mirror each other. The autobiographical voice gives the narrative an introspective quality, drawing readers into the social atmosphere of the sixteenth century through the protagonist's eyes. As a public-domain e-text, it suits readers interested in the tradition of the English historical novel, the female autobiographical form, or the theme of religious conflict, rather than those seeking a fast-paced, plot-driven read. While reading, note how the narrator remembers selectively and explains her own motives; this is both part of the characterization and an entry point for understanding nineteenth-century historical narrative technique.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the opening chapters first to see whether the autobiographical voice suits you before settling on a pace.
  2. Keep a simple character chart to track shifts in family and religious allegiances.
  3. Pause at historical events and check the sixteenth-century English religious background before continuing.
  4. After finishing, revisit the narrator's key choices and consider how the autobiographical form affects credibility.

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
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FAQ

Is this a real person's autobiography? No. It is a historical novel by Georgiana Fullerton written in autobiographical form, in which the fictional protagonist Constance Sherwood narrates sixteenth-century experiences in the first person. Readers should treat it as fiction, not as a historical source or genuine memoir.
Why write a historical novel as an autobiography? The autobiographical form lets historical events unfold through a personal perspective, heightening immersion and introspection. The narrator's memories are selective and interpretive; readers can follow her emotions while also noticing how she defends herself, which is what makes this kind of narrative worth close reading.
Do I need to know sixteenth-century history before reading? It helps but is not essential. A basic grasp of sixteenth-century English religious conflict and court politics makes the characters' positions and choices easier to follow. If you know nothing, look up key terms as you read rather than reading a history book first.
Does this e-edition include modern annotations? From the available information, this is a public-domain e-text released by Project Gutenberg, offering mainly the original text with no modern annotations or introduction indicated. For background, consult reliable separate sources on sixteenth-century English religion and society.

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

Fullerton, Georgiana, 1812-1885 Author

Georgiana Fullerton (1812–1885) was a nineteenth-century British novelist. Her work spans two kinds of writing, historical fiction and religious biography, and her style shows the moral concern and delicate psychological portrayal common in the Victorian era. Three of her works are included here: the historical novel Constance Sherwood: An Autobiography of the Sixteenth Century, which recounts in the first person the life and religious circumstances of an English Catholic family in the sixteenth century; Ellen Middleton—A Tale, a novel of social life centered on the fate of its heroine; and The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others, a religious biography of saints and their devout lives. Because public information is limited, details of her life are difficult to establish, but the surviving works show her skill at interweaving historical material, questions of faith, and human feeling, giving her a representative place in the religious fiction and saintly biography of her time.