Diana

Warner, Susan, 1819-1885Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.4

Word count: 718K words
Chapters: 72

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.Diana by Susan WarnerAuthor: Warner, Susan, 1819-1885,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Aug 28, 2009

Editor's review

Diana is a novel by Susan Warner in the category of American and Canadian literature, now released by Project Gutenberg as a free electronic text. Warner is known for delicate domestic and emotional narrative, and this book continues her attention to characters' inner lives and everyday ethics, making it a suitable sample for understanding nineteenth-century American women's writing traditions. The public-domain text is easy to search and excerpt in full, and can be used for course reading or comparative study. Readers should focus on narrative perspective, the development of character relationships, and period values, understanding the work within the context of popular fiction and the women's reading market of its time rather than judging it by the pacing standards of modern genre fiction. For readers studying early American fiction or public-domain literary resources, this book has stable textual reference value.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers studying nineteenth-century American women's fiction and popular literature
Teachers and students needing a public-domain English novel text for course reading
Readers who enjoy domestic ethics and emotional narrative and can accept an older pacing
Professionals engaged in organizing and analyzing public-domain eBooks

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking strong plot and fast-paced modern genre fiction
Readers unwilling to read nineteenth-century English originals and longer works
Researchers needing authoritative annotated editions or modern scholarly introductions

Reading tips

Skim chapter titles and character introductions first, draw a map of main character relationships, then read through.
After every few chapters, record emotional turning points and ethical conflicts to grasp the main narrative line.
Read alongside background materials on nineteenth-century American women's writing to understand the work's period context.
Use electronic search for character names and keywords to revisit foreshadowing and echoing passages.

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?

Not very suitable. It is a nineteenth-century English novel whose sentence patterns and vocabulary carry period features, and it is also long; English beginners face a heavy reading burden and should try it after gaining some experience reading English originals.

Does the public-domain edition have notes and an introduction?

Project Gutenberg releases public-domain electronic texts that usually contain no modern scholarly notes or introduction. Readers needing background information should consult literary histories and studies of the author separately.

What should I focus on while reading?

You may focus on the depiction of characters' inner lives, the way family and emotional relationships develop, and the period values expressed in the work, understanding it within the tradition of nineteenth-century American women's writing rather than judging it only by plot strength.

Comments

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About the author

Warner, Susan, 1819-1885 Author

Susan Warner (1819-1885) was a nineteenth-century American author known for inspirational coming-of-age fiction; her name and dates of birth and death appear in library catalog records. Public information about her is limited, and details of her life and education are difficult to establish with certainty, yet the library holds thirty-one of her works, which indicates a prolific and steady writing career. The Wide, Wide World is her best-known work, alongside Queechy, Diana, Nobody, Daisy, The End of a Coil, and Hills of the Shatemuc. Her fiction generally centers on young people's growth, family life, and moral trials, with a gentle and detailed style that emphasizes inner change and the formation of character. She found readers in the popular fiction market of her time and contributed to the later tradition of the coming-of-age novel.