Different Girls

Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.4

Word count: 306K words
Chapters: 31

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.Different Girls by E. A. Alexander et al.Author: ,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Jan 20, 2005

Editor's review

Different Girls is an English short-story collection by multiple authors, credited to E. A. Alexander et al., in the Project Gutenberg collection. Judging by the title and format, the book centers on girls of different temperaments and circumstances; the stories are fairly independent and carry the narrative appeal of early twentieth-century American popular magazines: clear plots, distinct character types, and stories often driven by everyday choices and emotional ups and downs. As a public-domain ebook, its value lies more in its documentary and sample-reading significance—it lets readers see how short stories of that era shaped images of women and handled themes of growing up and family. The language is of medium difficulty and the pieces are short, making it suitable as English extensive reading material or supplementary selections for literature classes. You needn't read for overall continuity; treat it as a set of period slices, noting differences in how narrators regard the girls and the moral closure common at story endings.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers looking for short English extensive-reading material who prefer narrative texts
Readers interested in images of women in early twentieth-century American popular literature
English teachers or literature self-learners needing supplementary classroom selections
Readers who like self-contained short stories they can put down anytime

Not a good fit for

Serious-literature readers wanting deep psychological description or complex narrative structure
Beginners with weak English who rely on line-by-line notes
Readers expecting a single author's unified style and coherent theme

Reading tips

Read piece by piece; after each, summarize the girl's situation and choices in two or three sentences to train extensive-reading summary skills.
Note the wording used to describe female characters in each piece, make brief excerpts, and compare how different authors handle them.
Use it as English extensive reading, one piece a day, without looking up every new word—grasp the plot first, then revisit language points.
For classroom use, pick two stories with similar themes for comparative discussion rather than reading the whole book.

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 by one author?

No. It is a short-story collection by multiple authors, credited to E. A. Alexander et al. Each piece has a different author, with differences in style and focus, so it's best read piece by piece rather than as a unified work.

Are the stories connected? Do I need to read them in order?

The pieces are fairly independent, with no continuous plot or fixed character threads. You can read them in any order or pick only the ones that interest you, without affecting comprehension.

Is it suitable for learning English?

It can serve as extensive reading material: sentences are not long and plots are clear, good for practicing main-idea grasping. But the text is from an earlier era and some expressions differ from contemporary English; focus on understanding the stories rather than scrutinizing every word.

Comments

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About the author

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Project Gutenberg is not a single author but a nonprofit digital library founded by Michael Hart in 1971 and one of the world's earliest free ebook platforms. It relies on volunteers to digitize, proofread, and freely distribute public-domain works and is now operated by the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Its collection contains 2,692 works, mainly religious texts, epics, and story collections, including the King James Bible and the Douay-Rheims volumes, the epic Mahabharata, a literal translation of the Arabian Nights, and Danish editions of the Old and New Testaments. Public information is limited, and its nature is closer to a public-interest compiling and dissemination body; these texts are open to the public, easy to consult and circulate, and have had a profound influence on the spread of ebooks and the preservation of public-domain resources.