General Bramble

Maurois, André, 1885-1967Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.6

Word count: 149K words
Chapters: 15

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.General Bramble by André MauroisAuthor: Maurois, André, 1885-1967,Language: English, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Dec 3, 2009

Editor's review

General Bramble is an English-language work by the French author André Maurois, available through Project Gutenberg. Maurois is best known for his biographies and novels, and his writing is marked by elegance and a keen eye for detail; this work likewise displays his light, perceptive narrative style. The title "Bramble" can be read as a person's name while also suggesting thorns, and the reader can sense the author's gentle irony about his characters' temperaments and circumstances. As a public-domain ebook, it suits readers who want to approach twentieth-century French literature in English. It is short and the language is not especially difficult, making it a good transitional text for English reading and a useful companion to Maurois's biographies, revealing the echoes between his fiction and his biographical writing. Read it without haste, and watch for the humor and understatement in dialogue and scene changes.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who want to approach French literature in the original English
Readers interested in Maurois who wish to broaden their reading
Learners who need short English texts for close reading practice
Readers who enjoy gentle humor and character-sketch narration

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting strong plot conflict or suspenseful twists
Readers who rely entirely on Chinese translations and do not wish to read English

Reading tips

Read a chapter straight through first, mark unfamiliar expressions, then go back and closely read the dialogue.
Read alongside Maurois's biographies to appreciate his techniques of character portrayal.
Use the search function of the Gutenberg e-edition to trace characters' appearances and changing relationships.

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 suitable for English beginners?

Not really for complete beginners. The work is in English; the sentences are not especially difficult, but the expression is still somewhat literary. Readers with intermediate English who are willing to look up words will find it smoother.

Do I need to know French literary background before reading?

Not necessarily. The work can be read on its own, but knowing Maurois's style and the background of his era will make it easier to appreciate the humor and the observation of character.

Any practical advice for reading the e-edition?

Use reading software that supports dictionary lookup and annotation; mark characters and scenes as you read, then review your marks afterward to grasp the narrative threads more clearly.

Comments

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About the author

Maurois, André, 1885-1967 Author

André Maurois (Maurois, André, 1885-1967) was a French writer known for his biographies and novels. The library holds two of his works: Ariel: ou, La vie de Shelley and General Bramble. The former is a biography of the English poet Shelley, titled "Ariel," tracing the life and inner world of this Romantic poet; the latter, judging by its title, appears to be one of his novels. Maurois's writing often recounts lives and historical backgrounds in a fluent, elegant style that is both literary and highly readable, giving his biographies a distinctive personal character. Because the library's information is limited, details of his life such as nationality and birth and death dates have not been confirmed, and public information is limited; this brief introduction is therefore based only on the available works, focusing on his biographical and fictional writing and the nature of these works.