Cupboard Love

William Wymark JacobsProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.3

Word count: 21K words
Chapters: 3

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.Cupboard Love by W. W. JacobsAuthor: Jacobs, W. W. (William Wymark), 1863-1943,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Apr 1, 2004

Editor's review

Jacobs is a master of the British short humorous story, skilled at creating reversals through small schemes and misunderstandings in everyday settings. The title Cupboard Love is itself a pun, and the story revolves around human ties and self-interest in family life; it is short and briskly paced. For English learners, the plain vocabulary and dense dialogue make it suitable as extensive reading material for getting a feel for English humor and the measure of understated irony; for literary readers, it offers a way to understand the narrative conventions of British popular short fiction from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century. When reading, pay attention to the subtext in characters' dialogue and how the author uses calm narration to set up the final twist. As a public-domain e-book, it is easily available and suited to reading one story at a time in spare moments.

Who it's for

A good fit for

English learners who want to improve extensive reading through short English fiction
General readers who enjoy British humor and short stories with twists
Students studying British popular literature and short narrative techniques

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer long, continuous plots and complex world-building
Readers looking for modern vernacular or contemporary subject matter
Beginners who find reading original English difficult

Reading tips

Read through once to grasp the plot, then revisit the dialogue and mark the clues that hint at the ending.
Read alongside other Jacobs stories to appreciate his habitual use of reversal.
Read the dialogue passages aloud to feel the rhythm and understated tone of British speech.

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 book suitable for English beginners?

The vocabulary is generally plain, but it contains early twentieth-century British colloquial expressions and slang, which still pose some difficulty for beginners. It is advisable to try it after reaching an intermediate reading level, or to read a Chinese summary first and then compare it with the original.

How long is the story?

This is a short work by Jacobs, usually readable in one or two sittings. The exact page count varies with the e-book layout, but it is a short story in scale.

What does the title Cupboard Love mean?

In English the phrase often refers to affection or ingratiation with a self-interested motive, while literally it is also connected with 'cupboard.' When reading, watch for the punning echo between the title and the plot, which is part of the author's humor.

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

William Wymark Jacobs Author · British · 1863–1943

William Wymark Jacobs (1863–1943) was a British short-story writer, born in London in 1863 and died there in 1943. In his early years he lived around the Thames docks and was familiar with the lives of sailors and dockworkers, which led him to write a great many humorous sea stories, often in a light and witty tone. His best-known work, The Monkey's Paw, is a classic horror short story included in The Lady of the Barge (1902); noted for its tight suspense and sudden twists, it is still widely anthologized in horror collections. The library holds 109 of his works, including The Lady of the Barge and Others, Ship's Company, A Tiger's Skin, Captains All, and Night Watches; his common category is inspirational growth. Public information is limited and details of his life are largely unavailable, yet his fiction is distinctive in subject, blending humor with horror, and has had a lasting influence on later short-story writing.