In the Depths of the Dark Continent, or The Vengeance of Van Vincent

Shea, Cornelius, 1863-1920Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.8
Word count
180K words
Chapters
18

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Suspense ThrillerAfrican ExplorationAdventure JourneyRevenge Motif19th CenturyExotic Culture

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.In the Depths of the Dark Continent; or, The Vengeance of Van Vincent by SheaAuthor: Shea, Cornelius, 1863-1920,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Jul 29, 2013

Editor's review

This work is a specimen of late nineteenth-century American popular adventure fiction. Its author, Cornelius Shea, sets his narrative in the African interior around a theme of revenge. Its value lies not in literary refinement but in the window it preserves for today's readers onto the popular reading tastes of that era: the plot advances through suspense and action, the settings reflect the typical imaginings of adventure literature, and the characters' motives are direct and intense. As a free e-book from Project Gutenberg, it is easy to access at any time and suitable as supplementary reading for the history of genre fiction. Readers might do well to approach it within the adventure-novel tradition, noting how the narrative pace serves serial-style reading needs and how the work shapes its exotic spaces. For readers studying popular literature, colonial-era imaginings, or the history of American mass publishing, this small book offers concrete textual examples; general readers can also enjoy it as a brisk old-fashioned adventure story.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the opening chapters first to grasp the revenge mainline, then proceed chapter by chapter; there is no need to ponder every word.
  2. Jot down notes on how the work depicts African scenes as you read, for later discussion.
  3. Read it alongside other adventure novels of the same period to observe similarities and differences in genre conventions.
  4. If used for a course, pair it with an introduction on popular literature and imperial imagination.

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.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18

FAQ

Is this book a complete novel? According to the Project Gutenberg entry, this is a full-length English novel classified under American literature. The entry does not provide the number of chapters or word count; readers can check the table of contents and length in the e-text and plan their reading pace accordingly.
There is no Chinese translation. Is it difficult to read? The work is a late nineteenth-century English popular novel, with period features in syntax and diction and a strongly plot-driven structure; the overall difficulty is moderate. Readers with college-level English reading ability can finish it with a dictionary; if reading purely for leisure, they can start with a plot summary before entering the main text.
What themes is this book suitable for studying? It can be used to explore the narrative conventions of popular adventure fiction, the revenge motif, the shaping of exotic spaces, and late nineteenth-century American popular reading tastes. It is material for the history of genre fiction, not a model of classic literature, and is suitable as a supplementary text.

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About the author

Shea, Cornelius, 1863-1920 Author · American · 1863–1920

Cornelius Shea (1863–1920) was an American author whose life spanned 1863 to 1920, and two of his works are held in this collection. His writing shows the distinct features of early popular adventure fiction. His representative works, In the Depths of the Dark Continent or, The Vengeance of Van Vincent and In the Wonderful Land of Hez or, The Mystery of the Fountain of Youth, reveal, even from their titles alone, a preference for exotic and hidden settings such as the African interior and the Fountain of Youth, weaving tales of revenge and exploration. Such works typically feature tight plotting and dense suspense, drawing readers with strange geographies and extraordinary encounters, and reflecting the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American popular readership's imagination of and appetite for the unfamiliar world. Because public information is limited, details of his life, the full scope of his writing, and his literary standing cannot be firmly established; this introduction relies mainly on the collection's records and the thematic tendencies suggested by his titles, focusing on his style and his place in popular literature.