Hagar

Johnston, Mary, 1870-1936Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.3

Word count: 595K words
Chapters: 60

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. Hagar by Mary Johnston. Author: Johnston, Mary, 1870–1936. Language: English. Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature. Release Date: Aug 24, 2015

Editor's review

Hagar is a novel by the American writer Mary Johnston, written in the early twentieth century and released here by Project Gutenberg as a free eBook in the American and Canadian literature category. Johnston's style carries the flavor of Southern literature and historical romance, and she excels at narrative from a woman's perspective; this work is no exception. The title comes from Hagar in the Bible, the woman cast out of her home who struggles to keep her son alive in the wilderness, and this allusion offers a key to understanding the protagonist's situation. Readers may note how the heroine seeks her place under the multiple pressures of family, region, and era, and how the author uses her characters' fates to reflect the expectations and constraints placed on women in that society. As a public-domain work, it is better suited as supplementary reading within literary history and the tradition of women's writing than as a plot-driven popular novel. Reading it alongside the social context of the American South from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century can help capture the period features of its narrative pace and psychological characterization.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in Southern American literature and the tradition of women's writing
Literature students studying American fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Readers accustomed to public-domain classics and willing to accept a slower narrative pace
Self-learners seeking to expand their reading through English-language eBooks

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer strong plotting and fast-paced modern genre fiction
Learners expecting a Chinese translation or a heavily annotated edition
General readers uninterested in religious allusions and historical background

Reading tips

Begin with a summary of the biblical story of Hagar before entering the text; this helps clarify the symbolic relation between the title and the protagonist.
Read alongside histories of Southern American literature and note how the author handles themes of women and family.
When reading the English original, sort out subject–verb structure in long sentences first rather than checking every word.
After finishing, review the protagonist's key choices and trace a line of psychological change.

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 Hagar signify?

Hagar is the biblical figure cast out of her home who struggles in the wilderness to keep her son Ishmael alive. By using this name, the author generally suggests that the protagonist is likewise excluded and must make her own way amid hardship; readers may watch for echoes between the character and this allusion.

Is this a Chinese book or an English one?

This is an English-language eBook released by Project Gutenberg, labeled as English and classified under American and Canadian literature. It contains no Chinese translation, so some English proficiency is required.

What kind of publisher is Project Gutenberg?

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, founded by Michael Hart in 1971 to digitize public-domain works. This book is therefore a freely available public-domain text, not a contemporary new release.

What background should I know before reading?

It helps to know the basic biblical story of Hagar and to have a general sense of American Southern society and women's circumstances in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Both aid in understanding the characters' motives and the novel's narrative focus.

Comments

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About the author

Johnston, Mary, 1870-1936 Author

Mary Johnston (Johnston, Mary, 1870-1936) was an American novelist, with 18 of her works held in this collection. Public information about her is limited, and many details of her life are difficult to verify, yet her fiction is fairly consistent in subject matter: she was skilled at narrative set against historical backgrounds, especially the society and fates of characters in colonial Virginia. Prisoners of Hope: A Tale of Colonial Virginia, By Order of the Company, and 1492 all draw on the early colonial and maritime era, while The Long Roll and Cease Firing concern the American Civil War. Her writing often uses love, loyalty, and conflict as threads, placing individual lives within large historical change; her plots move briskly and the atmosphere of the period is distinct. Representative works such as To Have and to Hold and Lewis Rand had some influence among readers of popular historical fiction at the time, making her one of the notable writers of early twentieth-century American historical romance.