Ginger-Snaps

Fanny FernProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.4

Word count: 419K words
Chapters: 42

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.Ginger-Snaps by Fanny FernAuthor: Fern, Fanny, 1811-1872,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Aug 14, 2012

Editor's review

Ginger-Snaps is a collection of essays and short pieces by the nineteenth-century American writer Fanny Fern, its title carrying the flavor of sharp-tongued sketches. In a lively, colloquial, and often sardonic voice, Fern writes about everyday life, social custom, and the situation of women, a style distinctly her own in the periodical writing of her day. The pieces are brief and suited to reading in fragments: readers can sense the rhythm of nineteenth-century American periodical prose and see how an early woman writer entered public debate through humor and irony. As a public-domain electronic text it is lightweight material for approaching American women's literature and periodical style; but its social context and allusions are remote from the present, and some of the irony can only be grasped with the background of the age.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers studying nineteenth-century American women's writing and periodical prose
Readers who enjoy short essays and English-language reading in fragments
Those interested in the history of American social custom and in humorous, satirical styles
Students of English and American literature looking to broaden their American reading

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking a systematic work of feminist theory
Chinese readers with weak English who need sentence-by-sentence annotation
Readers who prefer long, continuous narrative and complete plots

Reading tips

Read two or three pieces at a time; there is no need for continuity between short chapters—focus on the tone.
Where period customs and allusions appear, do a little checking against nineteenth-century American social background.
Read alongside essays by American women writers of the same period to compare subjects and tone.
Mark passages that best show the author's irony for easy return later.

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

What does the title Ginger-Snaps mean?

Literally it refers to ginger-flavored crisp biscuits; as a title it often suggests short pieces with a spicy bite, which suits the sardonic, light tone of the essays. Grasping this helps capture the author's tone.

Is this book suited to continuous reading from start to finish?

It consists of short essays and sketches that are relatively independent, better suited to dispersed reading. Reading straight through can tire you because of the dense period vocabulary and allusions; reading in sessions and choosing pieces by interest gives a better experience.

Do I need to know the author's biography to read it?

Knowing the basic background of the author as a nineteenth-century American periodical writer helps, but a detailed biography is not necessary. The text itself presents its subjects and tone; background knowledge mainly serves to understand the social context and targets of satire.

Comments

Find this book

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

Fanny Fern Author · American · 1811–1872

Fanny Fern (born Sara Payson Willis, later Patten, 1811–1872) was an American humorist and newspaper columnist, born in Portland, Maine, and one of the earliest women columnists. Her essays are known for satirizing social manners, written in a light yet sharply critical style. During her lifetime they were collected in volumes such as Fern Leaves from Fanny's Port-folio, Fresh Leaves, Ginger-Snaps, and Caper-Sauce, whose topics mostly revolve around men, women, and everyday social life. Published in 1853, Fern Leaves sold about eighty thousand copies and brought her fame; her novel Ruth Hall, drawn from her own experience, caused a sensation in literary circles. She also wrote Rose Clark, Folly as It Flies, and Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends, among others; the library holds eight of her works.