Dialstone Lane, Complete

William Wymark JacobsProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.6

Word count: 342K words
Chapters: 35

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.Dialstone Lane, Complete 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

W. W. Jacobs, known for his humorous short stories and tales of the sea, here presents Dialstone Lane, Complete, a full collection of linked narratives set around a single place and displaying the everyday comic manner he made his own: dialogue quick and shrewd, plots driven by misunderstanding and small schemes, satire gentle rather than biting. The value of the complete version lies in the echoes between installments; readers can feel how relationships shift gradually across the chapters and grasp the author's structural design better than in any single-story selection. Digitized by Project Gutenberg and in the public domain, the book suits the English-literature classroom as a sample of humor and suits readers who enjoy light English comedy for reading in installments on the commute or before sleep. Note that the language keeps idioms of early twentieth-century English and that some jokes depend on the social background of the time; today's readers may not catch them at once, so slow down and attend to what lies beneath the dialogue.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who enjoy English humor and everyday satire
Those who want to study Jacobs's narrative structure through a complete series
Literature lovers with upper-intermediate English who are willing to read dialogue closely
Teachers who need a public-domain English comic text

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer strong plots, action scenes, or suspenseful twists
Those with little experience reading English who find early English dialogue hard going
Readers looking for serious social critique or deep psychological portraiture

Reading tips

Read in the order of the pieces and watch for echoes of the same place and characters from one installment to the next.
Treat dialogue as the focus; mark turns of phrase and tone that reveal character.
Pause after every two or three pieces to review how relationships and misunderstandings accumulate.
Look up unfamiliar cultural background in brief notes rather than puzzling over every word.

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 does the complete version differ from a single-story selection?

The complete version preserves the cross-references between the linked stories and the gradual changes in relationships, so readers can see how misunderstandings and jokes build and develop across several pieces. A single-story selection is convenient for a quick start but loses this structural echo, making the author's design at the level of the whole book hard to appreciate.

What if I don't get the humor?

Jacobs's humor lies mostly in what is implied in dialogue and in his characters' small schemes, not in exaggerated plot. Slow down and notice the gap between what people say and what they mean; if a joke depends on unfamiliar period background, skip it for now and return after finishing the piece, and the point usually becomes clear.

Is this book suitable as English teaching material?

It can serve as supplementary reading in upper-intermediate English classes. The text is in the public domain, easy to copy and distribute in class; the dense dialogue is good for practicing pragmatic understanding and analyzing tone. But the language carries early twentieth-century usage, so teachers had best prepare brief background notes to keep students from losing interest through cultural distance.

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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.