In the Levant

Warner, Charles Dudley, 1829-1900Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.8

Word count: 802K words
Chapters: 81

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 Levant by Charles Dudley WarnerAuthor: Warner, Charles Dudley, 1829-1900,Language: English, Class: DS: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Asia, Release Date: Jun 1, 2016

Editor's review

In the Levant is a product of Charles Dudley Warner's 19th-century travel writing, recording his observations and impressions of the eastern Mediterranean coast. Warner was an essayist and critic whose travel writing is known for careful observation and leisurely style, which this book continues: it depicts cities, roads, and local conditions while interspersing personal commentary on local customs and historical sites. For today's readers, its value lies more in presenting the gaze and discourse through which 19th-century Western travelers viewed "the East," making it a research text for travel literature, cross-cultural perception, and the modern image history of the Middle East. It should be read as a cultural record of a particular era, not a practical modern guidebook. The English prose is leisurely in pace, suited to slow reading and excerpting. Readers interested in Middle Eastern history or travel writing may read it against contemporary works of the same kind to see similarities and differences in ways of seeing.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Literature specialists studying 19th-century travel literature and the travelogue tradition
Researchers of image history and cross-cultural studies on how the West wrote the Middle East
English readers who enjoy leisurely essay-style travel records
Near Eastern history students needing modern-era Levant observation sources

Not a good fit for

Travelers seeking contemporary practical guidebooks and route information
General readers expecting tight plots or adventure stories
Beginners unaccustomed to the pace and grammar of 19th-century English prose

Reading tips

Treat it as a historical text rather than a guide, noting the author's observational perspective and value judgments.
Read with maps and a brief history of the Levant to help locate places and ruins mentioned.
Excerpt passages describing cities and daily life, comparing the author's image of "the East."
Read against other contemporary Western travelogues to observe shared traits and differences in ways of seeing.

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

Can this book be used as a modern travel guide?

No. It records the observations and impressions of a 19th-century traveler; transport, lodging, and local conditions have long changed, so it is better read as travel literature and historical text.

What are the characteristics of Warner's writing style?

Warner was an essayist and critic whose prose is leisurely and detailed, skilled at depicting local conditions and daily observations with frequent personal commentary, in a slow rather than tightly plotted rhythm.

What should readers pay attention to?

Note the author's standpoint and discursive habits as a 19th-century Western traveler, and treat the descriptions as cultural records of a particular era rather than objective conclusions about the place.

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

Warner, Charles Dudley, 1829-1900 Author

Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1900) was an American writer and editor, with fifty-seven of his works held in this catalog. His subjects are notably wide-ranging: there are familiar essays on gardening and everyday leisure such as My Summer in a Garden, a study of a fellow writer in Washington Irving, and travel accounts of foreign places, including In the Levant, My Winter on the Nile and Our Italy, the last concerning Italy. The chapters associated with The Gilded Age indicate that he also took part in writing on social themes. The catalog classifies him under inspirational growth, suggesting that some of his works carry a tone of counsel and self-reflection. Public information is limited, so rather than dwelling on biographical detail, readers may begin with his essays and travel writings and appreciate their easy, unhurried style and close observation.