Edward Barnett, a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of
Aconite, TobiasProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019
Rating 2.9- Word count
- 122K words
- Chapters
- 13
Tags
English Originals Foreign Literature Social ClassFate and FortuneOrphan GrowthLife VicissitudesInspiration19th CenturyAmerican SouthSummary
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.Edward Barnett, a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer ofAuthor: Aconite, Tobias,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Jun 23, 2005Editor's review
This is a nineteenth-century popular English novel about Edward Barnett, a neglected child of South Carolina who rises to become a peer, the title itself stating the narrative core of his reversal of status. Attributed to Tobias Arconet, the work is classified under American and Canadian literature and published by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain electronic text. The novel has a clear popular-romance flavor, involving themes of birth, class mobility, and identity, and can serve as supplementary material for understanding the tastes of nineteenth-century popular English narrative and Anglo-American social imagination. It should be read in the context of popular literature rather than the classical canon, with attention to how its plotting serves the fantasy of rising in class and to the stereotyped treatment of region and identity in the narrative. It is suitable as collateral reading for enthusiasts of literary history, but not as a primary source for historical research.Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers interested in nineteenth-century popular English fiction and class narrative
- Literary enthusiasts studying the theme of identity mobility in Anglo-American popular literature
- Intermediate and advanced learners who need public-domain English texts for extensive reading practice
- Readers collecting nineteenth-century popular works set in the American South
Not a good fit for
- Readers expecting the depth of classic literature and complex characterization
- Beginners with weak English who need an annotated edition
- Readers who treat the novel as reliable historical material on the American South
Reading tips
- Read the opening and ending first to grasp the narrative frame of status reversal, then fill in the middle plot.
- While reading, note the key events of each change in the protagonist's status to trace the logic of class mobility.
- Compare with popular Anglo-American novels of the same period to observe common patterns in the theme of birth.
- English learners can excerpt three typical narrative sentences per chapter to practice understanding long sentences.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971Project 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.
Contents
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- 13
FAQ
Why is the title of this novel so long?
Nineteenth-century English novels often used long titles to summarize the protagonist's origins and the turning point of fate. The title here states Edward Barnett's change of status from a neglected child to a peer, in a typical popular-romance naming style.Is this novel suitable as historical material?
No. It is popular fiction whose plot serves the narrative fantasy of rising in status; its depiction of South Carolina society and class is literary and stereotyped, and can only serve as collateral evidence of literary imagination, not as reliable historical material.What is the text quality of the Gutenberg edition?
This edition is a public-domain electronic text released by Project Gutenberg in English, basically proofread but without a modern scholarly introduction or detailed annotations; readers need to supplement their own knowledge of nineteenth-century Anglo-American social background.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
Aconite, Tobias AuthorTobias Aconite is an author about whom very little public information is available; the library currently holds only one work by this name. That work is Edward Barnett, a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of. Its long, winding title suggests a narrative about Edward Barnett, a child from South Carolina who was neglected and eventually rose to the peerage, a story centered on personal growth and a dramatic turn of fortune. The emphasis on reversed status and crossing class boundaries in the title is common in nineteenth-century English popular fiction or biography-style narrative, suggesting the author is skilled at organizing a story around a checkered fate. Beyond this, the author's nationality, dates of birth and death, full English name, and writing career cannot be verified, so no further inferences should be made. Readers may approach the work as a narrative focused on the ups and downs of an individual's fate.