Front Lines
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Military history readers interested in World War I frontline life and the soldier's perspective
- Literature or journalism students studying war reporting, war narrative, and nonfiction writing
- Researchers who need a public-domain English World War I text for supplementary reading or quotation checking
- Readers who enjoy vivid, fragmentary firsthand observations rather than grand military history
Not a good fit for
- Readers seeking systematic battle analysis, strategic maps, and a complete historical narrative
- General readers who prefer fictional plots and character development for leisure
- Readers sensitive to detailed descriptions of war and unwilling to encounter the brutality of the front
Reading tips
- Learn the basic timeline and battle background of the Western Front in World War I first, then read the observations in the text; this will make orientation clearer.
- Treat the book as a collection of war sketches and read it piece by piece, noting one observation per piece without insisting on a continuous narrative.
- Pay attention to the author's linguistic stance and the limitations of the period, and distinguish firsthand description from value judgments.
- Read alongside an authoritative general history of World War I or a soldier's memoir to fill in the broader background the text does not cover.
About the publisher
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
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FAQ
Is this book a novel or war reportage?
Do I need to read a general history of World War I first?
How difficult is the English, and is it suitable for non-native readers?
Does this electronic edition include notes and maps?
Comments
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About the author
Boyd Cable (1878–1943) was the pen name of the writer Ernest Andrew Ewart. Born in India to Scottish parents, he later moved to Australia and served in South Africa. After the outbreak of the First World War he enlisted and went to the European front, winning fame with novels drawn from his trench experiences, including Between the Lines, Action Front, and Grapes of Wrath, and became one of the most popular war writers of the period. His work focuses on soldiers' daily life, combat, and psychology at the front, with a realistic style and a strong sense of firsthand battlefield observation. His true identity became widely known only after his death. Public information on his early education and postwar life is limited.
