Contrary Mary
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers who enjoy early American popular fiction and character-driven conflict
- English learners who need free English eBooks for extensive reading practice
- Literature enthusiasts studying American women's images and domestic narratives in the first half of the twentieth century
- Readers who want a lightweight text to see what a Project Gutenberg eBook looks like
Not a good fit for
- Readers expecting modern fast-paced plots and strong suspenseful twists
- Learners with weak English who cannot yet read original English novels independently
- Serious researchers who need authoritative annotated editions or scholarly collations
Reading tips
- Read the opening chapters first to grasp the tone of "Contrary Mary's" character, then decide whether to read closely or extensively
- Keep notes on character relationships and questions about the period background, and look them up together after finishing
- Read alongside other American novels about women from the same era and observe differences in characterization
- Use the electronic edition's search function to locate key plot points and do theme-based selective reading
About the publisher
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
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About the author
Temple Bailey (1869–1953) was an American writer of popular fiction, born in Petersburg, Virginia. From the early twentieth century onward she contributed regularly to national magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post and Cosmopolitan. Her works were mostly light-hearted romance stories with happy endings, and several of her novels made the annual bestseller lists. Her books sold about three million copies, and she was among the highest-paid authors of her day. Eight of her works are held here, including The Trumpeter Swan, Mistress Anne, The Gay Cockade, Glory of Youth, The Tin Soldier, Judy, and Contrary Mary. Writing in a brisk, cheerful style about love and everyday life, she appealed to the popular readership of her time and earned a place in early twentieth-century American popular literature. She died in Washington in 1953.
