Flower o' the Heather: A Story of the Killing Times

Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.5
Word count
558K words
Chapters
56

Tags

English Originals Historical Fiction Historical ReappraisalHistorical LegendFate and FortuneSurvival StruggleHeroismTurbulent EraReligious PersecutionFolk CustomsVictorian EraScottish Highlands

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.Flower o' the Heather: A Story of the Killing Times by Robert William MacKennaAuthor: ,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Sep 7, 2014

Editor's review

Flower o' the Heather: A Story of the Killing Times is a historical novel by Robert William MacKenna set during the "Killing Times" in Scottish history, the period of persecution of the Covenanters in the late seventeenth century. The novel presents the conflicts, faith and human choices of that era in narrative form and belongs to the tradition of English-language historical fiction combined with regional subject matter. Project Gutenberg's electronic edition makes this earlier novel accessible again, and it will appeal to readers interested in Scottish history, religious conflict or the tradition of the English historical novel. It is best read as popular historical narrative bearing the marks of its time, with attention to the characters' fates and the evocation of historical atmosphere, rather than as a work of strict historiography. Because the book was written long ago, its language and narrative pace differ from those of modern fiction; readers are advised to learn the background before entering the text.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Look up the basic historical background of the "Killing Times" before reading the text; character motivations will then be clearer.
  2. Proceed chapter by chapter and briefly review the relationships and conflicts after each chapter to avoid confusion.
  3. Mark unfamiliar place names and religious terms and look them up together rather than interrupting the reading flow.
  4. After finishing, compare the novel with Scottish historical sources to distinguish literary invention from the historical framework

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.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56

FAQ

What does the "Killing Times" refer to? It usually refers to the period in late seventeenth-century Scotland when the Covenanters suffered persecution. The novel uses this period as its background, but the specific plot is literary invention and should not be taken directly as a factual record.
How difficult is the English in this book? It is an earlier English novel, with sentence patterns and vocabulary more traditional than those of modern popular fiction, and some passages may involve dialect or historical terms. Readers with university-level English reading ability can finish it with the help of reference works.
Do I need to read the author's other works first? No. This is a self-contained novel that does not depend on earlier works. If you are interested in the author's style, you can look up his other works after finishing it.

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About the author

Project Gutenberg Author

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