Hello, Boys!

Wilcox, Ella Wheeler, 1850-1919Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.0

Word count: 78K words
Chapters: 8

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.Hello, Boys! by Ella Wheeler WilcoxAuthor: Wilcox, Ella Wheeler, 1850-1919,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Oct 1, 2004

Editor's review

Hello, Boys! is a work by the American poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox, published in Project Gutenberg's free eBook collection and classified under American literature. Wilcox is known for poetry and essays that are metrically regular, plain in language and aimed at a broad public, and this work continues her warm, exhortatory tone, addressing young readers on growth, courage, how to treat others and attitudes to life, with a brisk pace and strong readability. It is more like a message to the young from an experienced elder than a difficult literary experiment. For Chinese readers, the book offers a sample of late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century American popular poetry and inspirational writing, and also works as light English reading material. You need not scrutinize the meter line by line; read it as a set of short exhortations and sense what that era expected of the young, and in what tone.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in American popular poetry and inspirational writing
Learners who want short English texts for light reading
Readers who enjoy messages addressed to young people about growing up
Literature lovers studying late nineteenth-century American popular reading tastes

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking modern fiction narrative and complex characterisation
Readers who prefer deep literary criticism and experimental writing
Readers put off by an exhortatory, preachy tone

Reading tips

Read selectively, starting with the pieces whose titles appeal most, rather than straight through from beginning to end.
Read aloud passages with obvious meter to feel the rhythm and rhyme of nineteenth-century American popular poetry.
Notice the tone and wording the author uses to address the young, treating it as a sample of period language to collect.
If using it for English study, copy out one or two favourite sentences from each piece and try imitating them.

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

Who is this book mainly written for?

Judging by the title and contents, it addresses young readers, especially boys, discussing growth, character and attitudes to life in a warm, exhortatory tone. Today's readers can see it as a sample of popular reading for the young in that era, rather than something only for a certain age.

What kind of writer is Wilcox?

Ella Wheeler Wilcox was a prolific American poet of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries whose work is metrically regular, plain in language and aimed at a broad public, often with an exhortatory, inspirational flavour. This book continues that style and is a good introduction to her popular writing.

There are no Chinese annotations in the electronic edition. Will it be hard to read?

The language is generally plain and the sentences are short, easier than much literature of the same period. If you meet period expressions or passages whose cultural background is unclear, skip them for now and grasp the overall tone and theme; there is no need to check every word.

Comments

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About the author

Wilcox, Ella Wheeler, 1850-1919 Author

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) was an American poet known for her lyric verse and short philosophical poems. The collection holds 23 of her works, spanning poetry, prose, and aphoristic essays, including Poems of Passion, Maurine and Other Poems, The Heart of the New Thought, Poems of Sentiment, Poems of Purpose, and The Kingdom of Love. Her poems often center on love, emotion, life's aims, and spiritual reflection; their plain, direct language and smooth rhythm carry an encouraging, inspirational tone that makes them easy for ordinary readers to remember and quote. Beyond poetry, she also wrote prose and maxim-like pieces, such as A Woman of the World: Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters and Hello, Boys!, addressing young readers on conduct and feeling from an experienced woman's perspective. Public information is limited, so biographical details are hard to set out; the surviving works show her attention to everyday emotion and moral counsel, in a gentle, approachable style that gave her some influence among popular poetry readers of her time.