From School to Battle-field: A Story of the War Days

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

Rating 2.9
Word count
430K words
Chapters
43

Tags

English Originals War and Military Fiction War MemoryAdventure JourneyComing of AgeGrowing UpSocial Observation

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.From School to Battle-field: A Story of the War Days by Charles KingAuthor: King, Charles, 1844-1933,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Oct 9, 2011

Editor's review

This is a coming-of-age novel for young readers set against the backdrop of war years. The author, Charles King, had military experience himself, so the book's depiction of the shift from school life to the battlefield has an eyewitness texture. The work's core value lies in presenting a boy's psychological and fateful transition from classroom to battlefield, with both detailed evocation of everyday school life and direct portrayal of war scenes; it serves as an accessible introduction to nineteenth-century war-themed juvenile literature. King's prose carries the moral instruction and patriotic sentiment common to works of that era, the characters are fairly upright, and the plot advances clearly, making it easy to get into. As a public-domain e-book, it is easy to obtain and makes a lightweight choice for reading English originals, as well as material for readers studying American juvenile literature and war narrative. While reading, notice how the author handles the contrast between the two spaces of "school" and "battlefield"; that structure is more thought-provoking than the plot itself.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the opening school section first, note how the boy's character is established, then compare his changes in the battlefield chapters.
  2. When encountering old-fashioned expressions or military terms, skip them at first, keep the overall reading rhythm, and return to them later.
  3. Read alongside background material on nineteenth-century American history to help understand the war context in the book.
  4. After finishing, trace the two threads of "school" and "battlefield" and consider how the author uses spatial shift to advance the theme of growth.

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

FAQ

Is this book suitable for English beginners to read directly? Not very. This is an English original whose style bears the marks of nineteenth-century works, with long sentences and considerable military and school-life vocabulary, so readers with weak English may stumble. It is recommended for readers at an intermediate level who can read through with a dictionary; beginners might start with a retold or bilingual edition.
Are the war descriptions in the book bloody? From the available information, this is juvenile literature; although Charles King had military experience, the book is aimed at young readers, and war scenes are mostly presented with the restrained style customary for the era, emphasizing atmosphere and character growth rather than sensational bloodshed. Readers should still judge the exact level for themselves.
What is special about this edition? This edition is released by Project Gutenberg as a free public-domain e-book that is easy to obtain at no cost. It preserves the original English text without modernization, suiting readers who want the authentic old text, but it also means no modern annotations or introduction, so readers must fill in background knowledge themselves.

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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.