Eventide

Afton, Effie, 1829-1887Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.3

Word count: 707K words
Chapters: 71

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.Eventide by Effie AftonAuthor: Afton, Effie, 1829-1887,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Dec 26, 2006

Editor's review

Eventide is a work by the American writer Effie Afton (1829–1887), digitized by Project Gutenberg and made available to readers again as part of the public-domain American literary corpus. Afton's writing often deals with themes of emotion and everyday life; the title means "dusk," and a quiet, introspective tone can be felt from the title alone. As the work of a nineteenth-century American woman author, it offers a sample for understanding the literary tastes, domestic-life writing, and modes of emotional expression of the period. The electronic edition is in the original English, and its length and scope make it suitable as short-range reading material. Readers may treat it as a window: to see how an author obscured by time chose her words and shaped her sentences, and to see what kinds of stories and emotions readers of that era cared about. One caveat: this is not a bestseller in the modern sense, and its pacing and linguistic habits differ from contemporary works, so reading it requires some patience and historical empathy.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Students of English literature focusing on nineteenth-century American women's writing
Readers who enjoy public-domain English e-books and are willing to explore lesser-known authors
Literature enthusiasts interested in nineteenth-century American domestic and emotional themes
Learners who wish to improve their appreciation of English literature through reading original texts

Not a good fit for

General readers who prefer Chinese translations and are not accustomed to English originals
Readers of fiction who seek strong dramatic conflict and modern narrative pacing
Researchers who need detailed annotations on the author's life and the work's background

Reading tips

Begin with the opening chapters to become familiar with the author's sentence patterns and diction, then proceed gradually.
While reading, note the imagery of "dusk" and the creation of emotional atmosphere, and make brief annotations.
Read in comparison with works by other nineteenth-century American women authors to appreciate commonalities of the era.
Read a short section each day, then summarize the plot and your impressions in one or two sentences.

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 a collection of essays?

The available information only indicates the author, language, and classification; the genre is not specified in detail. Judging from the title and the author's background, it is a narrative work in nineteenth-century American literature; for the specific genre, readers are advised to judge for themselves based on the opening of the original text.

Why is the author not well known?

Effie Afton lived in the nineteenth century, and her works were recirculated after being digitized by Project Gutenberg. She is not a writer commonly mentioned in mainstream literary history, and information about her is limited; readers may treat this as a discovery-style reading of a lesser-known author.

Is the English difficult?

The work is in nineteenth-century English, with sentence patterns and diction that differ from contemporary English; readers with college-level English reading ability should generally be able to cope. When encountering long sentences, first sort out the subject–predicate structure, then work out the modifiers.

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About the author

Afton, Effie, 1829-1887 Author · American · 1829–1887

Effie Afton (Afton, Effie, 1829–1887) was an American poet and novelist who published mainly under the pen name Effie Afton. Public information about her life is limited, so later readers can largely know her only through the texts published under that name. The collection here includes one work by her, Eventide. Judging from the title and genre of this work, her writing shows both lyrical and narrative inclinations: it attends to the delicate expression of personal feeling while also attempting to carry observations of everyday life through story. As a nineteenth-century American woman writer, she entered the literary world through a pen name, a practice not uncommon at the time; it facilitated publication and to some extent protected her private life. Her works are modest in scale, yet they offer a useful sample for studying women's literature and periodical writing of the period, and they keep the name Effie Afton remembered by readers today.