Hepplestall's

Brighouse, Harold, 1882-1958Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.8

Word count: 543K words
Chapters: 55

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.Hepplestall's by Harold BrighouseAuthor: Brighouse, Harold, 1882-1958,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Aug 7, 2017

Editor's review

Hepplestall's is a play by the English playwright Harold Brighouse, available as a free eBook from Project Gutenberg. Brighouse was known for depicting Lancashire textile life and family comedy, and this play continues his concern with local manners and business ethics: through a dispute centering on the family business, it shows ordinary people wavering between self-interest and family loyalty. The dialogue is vivid, with dialect color and characterization reinforcing each other, and the stagecraft is strong, so that scene blocking rises naturally in the mind while reading. As a public-domain electronic text, it serves as a primary source for readers studying early twentieth-century English regional drama, working-class subjects, or British commercial-family narratives, and can also be used by theater enthusiasts for reading aloud and scene study. It is best understood within the tradition of the English regional theater, with attention to the rhythm of the lines and the arrangement of scenes, rather than read as a novel in pursuit of plot density.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Literature scholars studying early twentieth-century English regional drama and working-class subjects
Theater enthusiasts looking for one-act or small-cast ensemble texts for amateur companies
Readers interested in British commercial-family ethics and regional-dialect dialogue

Not a good fit for

General readers seeking tight suspense plots or full-length novels
Beginners unfamiliar with English play formats who find reading dialogue difficult

Reading tips

Read the character list and scene notes first, and clarify the family members and business relationships before entering the dialogue.
Read aloud, assigning lines by role, to feel Brighouse's dialect rhythm and comic pauses.
After reading, consult background material on the social context of contemporary English regional theater to understand the play's real-world point.

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 a novel or a play?

It is a play, organized in acts and scenes, built mainly on character dialogue and supplemented by stage directions. Readers need to follow the play format to understand scene changes and entrances and exits, rather than following a novelistic narrative thread.

Can I read it if my English is not good?

The text is in English and includes regional dialect and colloquial expressions, so it demands a certain level of English reading. Intermediate or higher reading ability is recommended, or reading alongside an annotated edition or translation, grasping the character relationships first before reading the dialogue closely.

What are the features of the Gutenberg edition?

Project Gutenberg offers a free electronic text that is easy to search and copy, suitable for research citations and classroom distribution. The formatting is plain, however, and lacks scholarly notes and an introduction, so serious researchers should consult a scholarly annotated edition as well.

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

Brighouse, Harold, 1882-1958 Author

Harold Brighouse (1882–1958) was a British playwright best known for his comedies portraying life in Lancashire. Nine of his works are included here, among them the four-act comedy Hobson's Choice: A Lancashire Comedy in Four Acts, the collection Three Lancashire Plays: The Game, The Northerners, Zack, and other plays such as Graft: A Comedy in Four Acts, Garside's Career: A Comedy in Four Acts, and Dealing in Futures: A Play in Three Acts, as well as The Price of Coal and the novel The Marbeck Inn. These works show his gift for depicting, with light humour, the everyday manners and commercial life of Lancashire, with lively dialogue and strong local colour. Public information about his life is limited, so no details of his birthplace, education, or career are conjectured here.