Found in the Philippines: The Story of a Woman's Letters

King, Charles, 1844-1933Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
351K words
Chapters
36

Tags

English Originals War and Military Fiction War BackgroundFate and FortuneLove EntanglementsLove StoryDocumentary NarrativeExotic CulturePhilippine CultureCross-Cultural ViewFemale PerspectiveOverseas Letters

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.Found in the Philippines: The Story of a Woman's Letters by Charles KingAuthor: King, Charles, 1844-1933,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Jun 23, 2008

Editor's review

This novel by Charles King uses "a woman's letters" as its thread, setting the story against a Philippine backdrop; it is a typical work of early twentieth-century American fiction handling exotic subjects and emotional narrative. Its value lies not in grand scenes but in advancing the plot through the intimate form of letters, letting readers feel misunderstanding, longing, and turns of fate in the gaps between characters' correspondence. King's pacing is rather traditional, emphasizing plot development and character relationships, suited to readers who enjoy old-fashioned English novels and are interested in epistolary narrative. As a public-domain ebook, it is easy to search and excerpt on screen, and also serves as a textual sample for observing how American literature of the time wrote about the Philippines. While reading, one might note how the narrator describes the local environment and how the female voice is relayed and constructed. Overall, this is a work suited to slow reading and to comparative reading alongside similar colonial-era novels, rather than a book for those seeking strong suspense or a modern pace.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the opening letters first to clarify who is writing to whom, then move into the main thread.
  2. Keep a simple character-relationship chart and note things as you read to avoid confusion caused by the epistolary form.
  3. When you hit long sentences, grasp the main structure first; don't look up every word—keep your reading rhythm.
  4. After finishing, revisit key letters alongside the plot turns to appreciate the foreshadowing in the epistolary narrative.

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

FAQ

Is this book an epistolary novel? Judging from the title and the available information, the story centers on "a woman's letters," and letters are an important means of advancing the narrative, but the information does not state whether the entire book consists of letters. It can be treated as a traditional novel in which letters are a key element.
How difficult is the English? Charles King was active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and his syntax is rather traditional, with many long sentences and old-fashioned expressions. Readers with university-level English reading ability and a taste for classic novel pacing will find it smoother; beginners may use annotations or read selected passages.
Do I need to know Philippine history first? Systematic preparation is not necessary. The story focuses on characters' emotions and the thread of letters, with the historical background serving more as atmosphere and setting. For deeper understanding, you can supplement a basic timeline of U.S.–Philippine relations at the time after reading, to help understand the novel's exotic writing.

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

King, Charles, 1844-1933 Author

Charles King (1844–1933) was an American author. Public information about him is limited, and few systematic records of his life details are available. The library holds twenty-eight of his works, commonly classified under inspirational growth. Representative titles include Campaigning with Crook, and Stories of Army Life; Starlight Ranch, and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier; A Wounded Name; Warrior Gap: A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68; From the Ranks; Sunset Pass or, Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land; Lanier of the Cavalry or, A Week's Arrest; and An Apache Princess: A Tale of the Indian Frontier. As the titles suggest, his writing draws largely on American frontier and military life, centering on Indian frontier conflicts, cavalry experience, and everyday camp life. The works combine adventure narrative with elements of personal growth, emphasizing plot momentum and the recreation of period atmosphere, and offer some reference value for understanding nineteenth-century American popular literature on Western military themes.