Conversation

Conklin, Mary GreerProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.4

Word count: 136K words
Chapters: 14

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.Conversation by Mary Greer ConklinAuthor: Conklin, Mary Greer,Language: English, Class: BJ: Philosophy, Psychology, Religion: Ethics, Social usages, Etiquette, Religion, Release Date: Jan 18, 2009

Editor's review

Mary Greer Conklin's Conversation is a small practical book on the art of conversation, classified under etiquette and social cultivation. It discusses not conversational tactics but conversation as an outward expression of cultivation: how to listen, how to respond, how to let dialogue flow naturally without exhausting the participants. The book's views bear clear marks of their era, and some examples and phrasing read as somewhat old-fashioned today, yet its core judgment that “conversation is a two-way giving” has not gone out of date. It suits being kept at hand for casual reading, one or two sections at a time, followed by reflection on one's own recent conversational experience—more rewarding than reading it straight through. For readers who want to improve their self-expression in social settings without reading success-manual tactic books, this is a gentle alternative.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who want to improve the quality of everyday conversation and their listening ability
Readers interested in old-style essays on social etiquette and cultivation
Readers who need gentle, practical communication reference and dislike tactic formulas

Not a good fit for

Readers looking for ready-to-use negotiation or sales scripts
Readers expecting support from modern empirical psychology research

Reading tips

Read only one or two sections at a time, then recall a recent conversation for comparison
Keep a pen ready and mark the advice still relevant to present-day social situations
Read together with a friend and exchange views on the book's points—itself a conversation exercise

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

How is this book different from modern communication-skills books?

It is closer to a cultivation essay than a skills manual, focusing on attitude and tact in conversation rather than specific tactical templates. The examples bear the marks of their era, and readers must judge for themselves which parts still apply.

How difficult is the English, and is it suitable for learning English?

The text is in English, with fairly formal wording and regular sentence patterns; overall difficulty is moderate. It suits extensive reading for building expressions, but some old-fashioned phrasing should not be carried directly into modern spoken English.

Is the book's advice still applicable today?

The basic principles of listening, responding, and minding the rhythm of conversation still apply; specific social situations and etiquette details need to be judged in light of contemporary contexts and should not be copied wholesale.

Comments

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About the author

Conklin, Mary Greer Author

Mary Greer Conklin is an author about whom limited public information is available. Only one work by her can currently be confirmed, Conversation. Judging from the surviving cataloguing information, her writing centres on the theme of conversation, concerned not with social etiquette in general but with the ways, conditions and meaning of people talking with one another. Because basic details such as her life, nationality and dates of birth and death are not clearly recorded, it is difficult to trace the full arc of her writing or to place Conversation within her career. This single work nonetheless invites readers to treat everyday dialogue as something worth examining closely: how a conversation unfolds, how participants listen and respond, and what role language plays in exchange. Writing of this kind is usually aimed at general readers and leans on experience and observation rather than strict theoretical construction. For Chinese readers, Conklin's name is not yet well known, and the value of her work awaits fuller documentation.