Count Frontenac

LeSueur, William Dawson, 1840-1917Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.4

Word count: 570K words
Chapters: 57

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.Count Frontenac by William Dawson LeSueurAuthor: LeSueur, William Dawson, 1840-1917,Language: English, Class: F1001: North America local history: Canada, Release Date: Sep 7, 2011

Editor's review

This work centers on Frontenac, governor of Canada under the French, and belongs to narrative history in the field of Canadian regional and North American colonial history. William Dawson LeSueur builds around the man, tracing the late-seventeenth-century Anglo-French contest in North America and presenting multiple threads: colonial governance, military conflict, and relations with Indigenous peoples. Its readability comes from grounding institutions and events in a particular figure, making the power structure of the period easier to grasp. For readers who need an outline of early Canadian history, it is a useful introduction; but it was written long ago, and its perspective and selection of sources bear the marks of its time, so readers should keep a critical eye and not treat it as the only authoritative account. It works as a starting point for thematic reading in history, to be supplemented with more recent scholarship.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in early Canadian history and North American colonial history
General history lovers who want a figure-based entry into the Anglo-French contest in North America
Students taking North American history courses who need supplementary reading

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting current scholarly overviews or the latest archaeological findings
Readers who want only fictional historical novels with strong plot tension
Readers with little interest in colonial political and military detail

Reading tips

First get a general picture of the late-seventeenth-century Anglo-French situation in North America, then enter the narrative.
Note the author's judgments of cause and effect, distinguishing narrative from documentary evidence.
Keep a map handy for the places mentioned to link space and sequence.
Afterward compare with more recent works on Canadian history to test and supplement the book's views.

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 mainly a biography or a history of the colony?

It is built around Frontenac as a figure, but its content covers colonial governance, military conflict, and the North American power structure, combining personal narrative with regional history; it should not be simply classed as a biography.

Is the historical account still reliable today?

The book was written long ago, and its perspective and selection of sources reflect the limits of its time. It can serve as an introduction to the historical context, but readers should stay critical and compare it with more recent scholarship.

Do I need prior knowledge of Canadian history?

Not systematically, but a basic grasp of seventeenth-century Anglo-French relations in North America makes for smoother reading. Complete beginners might first consult a concise background account, then enter the book's narrative of people and events.

Comments

Find this book

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

LeSueur, William Dawson, 1840-1917 Author · Canadian · 1840–1917

William Dawson LeSueur (1840–1917) was a Canadian historian and journalist who made his living by writing and left his mark on Canadian historiography and public debate. He wrote several works on Canadian history. His representative work, Count Frontenac, takes the life and times of the French governor of New France as its thread, narrating the politics, warfare, and ethnic relations of Canada during the French colonial period. LeSueur valued both historical sources and narrative, wrote clearly, and was skilled at placing figures within their concrete historical settings, giving his books both readability and reference value. His experience as a journalist also shaped his style, leading him to aim for accuracy without losing vividness when addressing the public. Public information is limited, and details of his life and the full range of his works remain to be further examined, but the works available show that he contributed to the organization and dissemination of early Canadian history.