Inchbracken: The Story of a Fama Clamosa

Robert ClelandProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.6
Word count
625K words
Chapters
63

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Social ObservationEnglish SocietyPortrait GalleryFate and FortuneFamily BondsComplex HumanityDaily ReflectionsMoral DilemmaClass RigiditySuspense Narrative

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.Inchbracken: The Story of a Fama Clamosa by Robert ClelandAuthor: Cleland, Robert,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jul 25, 2012

Editor's review

Inchbracken: The Story of a Fama Clamosa is an English novel, and the subtitle alone—"fama clamosa"—signals its central tension: how a rumour or scandal spread far and wide agitates a local society. The available data places it in English literature as a public-domain electronic text; its length and plot details must be explored by the reader. Its value lies in observing how a nineteenth-century novel handles the themes of reputation, rumour and communal pressure: how gossip is generated, how people of different positions exploit it, and how an individual faces being publicly narrated. The narrative has the leisure and moral concern of old fiction, with dense dialogue and scene-setting, suited to readers willing to read slowly and attend to the mechanisms of public opinion. Those seeking fast-paced suspense may find it slow; but entering through the question of how rumour shapes a community can make it rewarding. Readers are advised to note how reports change as they pass between characters, and the narrator's attitude toward them.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. First note the rumour event corresponding to "fama clamosa" and trace its chain of transmission.
  2. Keep brief notes by character, observing how different figures retell the same report.
  3. Mark long passages of commentary and return to the narrator's moral judgment after the plot.
  4. If the English is hard, read chapter openings and endings first, then fill in details.

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
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63

FAQ

What does "fama clamosa" mean in the title? It is a Latin legal and ecclesiastical term roughly meaning a scandal or rumour that causes public outrage and is widely spread. The title uses it to signal that the story turns on an event everyone discusses; understanding the term helps grasp the book's central conflict.
Is this novel suitable as English-learning material? It can serve as extensive reading, but note that it is nineteenth-century English fiction with long sentences and intertwined narration and commentary. Read for chapter gist first, then closely read dialogue and key scenes; do not start by parsing every word.
Do I need Scottish background to read this book? The title suggests local colour, but the data provide no further setting details. Readers need not master specialised background in advance; build context from characters, place names and community relations as you read, and look things up as needed.
Is the e-book version information reliable? The data show it was released by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain electronic text, with a release date of 2019; the original novel is older. When citing, distinguish e-book release information from the original work, and consult authoritative editions for textual scholarship.

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About the author

Robert Cleland Author

Robert Cleland was a Victorian novelist about whom public information is limited: neither his dates of birth and death nor his nationality can be verified, and few details of his life are known. Six of his works are held in the collection, including Inchbracken (1883), A Rich Man's Relatives (1885), and True to a Type (1887). Inchbracken is set against rural life during the period of the Scottish church schism, while the others draw chiefly on family entanglements and social observation, attending to personal relationships and everyday ethics in a realistic vein tinged with irony. These novels were later digitized and reissued by Project Gutenberg, and so have survived to offer today's readers a sample of Victorian popular fiction and its themes.