Dream Days

Kenneth GrahameProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

4.0

Word count: 214K words
Chapters: 22

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.Dream Days by Kenneth GrahameAuthor: Grahame, Kenneth, 1859-1932,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jul 3, 2008

Editor's review

Dream Days is Kenneth Grahame's prose memoiristic work following The Golden Age, retelling childhood games, imagination, and family life from an adult's retrospective view. Grahame's prose is light and poetic, skilled at capturing the subtle shifts of a child's psychology in ordinary trifles, weaving seemingly loose childhood fragments into a narrative with a nostalgic atmosphere. This book is released free by Project Gutenberg as an English e-book, a public-domain English literary resource suitable as supplementary reading for understanding late nineteenth-century English prose style and childhood writing. It wins not through plot but through tone and detail in building atmosphere; it suits slow reading in quiet hours and can also be read alongside the author's other childhood-themed work to appreciate the continuity of his style. For readers studying children's literature or English prose, the book offers a short but worthwhile sample for close reading.

Who it's for

A good fit for

General readers who enjoy English prose and nostalgic childhood writing
Researchers studying children's literature or Grahame's works
Readers hoping to improve their language sense through light reading of English originals
Readers interested in late nineteenth-century English daily life

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting strong plot and fast-paced stories
Beginning readers who need a Chinese translation or bilingual edition
Readers who prefer practical, knowledge-based nonfiction

Reading tips

Read chapter by chapter, pausing briefly after each to savor the narrative tone and details.
Keep a notebook to record depictions of the childhood perspective, making it easier to observe the author's handling.
Read alongside Grahame's The Golden Age to appreciate the continuity and variation of the same theme.
When reading the English original, first read through a paragraph to grasp the tone, then revisit unfamiliar words, avoiding frequent lookups that interrupt the rhythm.

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 a novel or prose?

It is closer to prose childhood memoir narrative, composed of relatively independent fragments without a strong plotline running throughout; the focus is on tone, detail, and the presentation of childhood psychology.

Can I read this book if my English is not good?

This is the English original; the sentences are rather literary, and while the vocabulary is not obscure, it demands a fairly good feel for the language. Readers with weaker English can first read a Chinese translation to understand the content, then try the original; annotated editions or introductions can also help.

What are the features of this edition?

This edition is released by Project Gutenberg as a free public-domain e-book, containing the English original text, convenient for reading and searching on electronic devices, but it has no accompanying translation or detailed annotations.

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

Kenneth Grahame Author · British (Scottish) · 1859–1932

Kenneth Grahame (1859–1932) was a British (Scottish) writer, born in Edinburgh; after losing his mother in early childhood, he moved to England with his grandmother. He worked for a long time at the Bank of England and rose to become its secretary. Grahame first won recognition for his nostalgic prose collections of childhood, The Golden Age and Dream Days, which are gentle in tone and observe the adult world through a child's eyes. The Wind in the Willows, published in 1908, is his masterpiece of children's literature. It creates vividly characterised figures such as Mole, Rat, Badger and Toad, sets their adventures against the pastoral life of riverbank and woodland, and blends humour, friendship and adventure in clear, rhythmic prose. It has become a classic of English children's literature and has deeply influenced later animal stories and children's fantasy.