Jim of Hellas, or In Durance Vile: The Troubling of Bethesda Pool
Richards, Laura Elizabeth Howe, 1850-1943Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019
Rating 3.0- Word count
- 79K words
- Chapters
- 8
Tags
English Originals Foreign Literature Family BondsLove EntanglementsTrials and TribulationsComing of AgePsychological InsightGrowing UpDaily ReflectionsHeartwarming NarrativeNew EnglandGirlhoodSummary
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.Jim of Hellas, or In Durance Vile; The Troubling of Bethesda Pool by RichardsAuthor: Richards, Laura Elizabeth Howe, 1850-1943,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: May 14, 2016Editor's review
This work is a collection of two novellas by Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards, a late nineteenth-century American writer of children's literature: Jim of Hellas, or In Durance Vile and The Troubling of Bethesda Pool. Richards handles morally instructive material with a light touch, weaving dialogue and everyday detail into the unfolding plot so that the stories never feel preachy. This free electronic edition was produced by Project Gutenberg and belongs to the public domain. It will appeal to readers curious about the landscape of nineteenth-century American children's literature and serves well as extensive reading material for English learners. Read it as a window onto how writers of that era spoke to young people about freedom, restraint, and inner turmoil. As an early electronic text, it may preserve the original chapter structure, so readers are advised to move through it chapter by chapter on an e-reader and to note its narrative rhythm and period vocabulary.Who it's for
A good fit for
- General readers interested in nineteenth-century American children's literature
- English learners seeking public-domain English originals for extensive reading
- Primary and secondary school literature teachers in need of short narrative material
- Literature enthusiasts studying Richards's body of work
Not a good fit for
- Readers who prefer fast-paced contemporary plots and strong narrative conflict
- Academic readers seeking detailed author biography and scholarly annotations
- Beginners who find nineteenth-century English vocabulary and syntax difficult
Reading tips
- Read the opening scene-setting passages before the dialogue to grasp the period atmosphere.
- Read the two novellas separately and jot down a few lines on theme and impression after each.
- Guess unfamiliar words from context first and look them up after finishing the chapter.
- English learners can choose a passage of dialogue for reading aloud or retelling practice.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971Project 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
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
FAQ
Which two stories does this book contain?
According to the source material, the book collects two works, Jim of Hellas, or In Durance Vile and The Troubling of Bethesda Pool, both by Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards, issued together in one volume by Project Gutenberg.Is the text of the electronic edition reliable?
The book was produced by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain electronic text and has gone through volunteer proofreading. Early electronic texts may, however, retain original spellings and chapter structure; readers should prioritize understanding the meaning rather than being troubled by minor formatting differences.Is it suitable as a bedtime read for children?
The two stories carry moral lessons and period vocabulary and are moderate in length, but the language is nineteenth-century English, so reading them aloud to a child may require explanation along the way. If the child already has some listening foundations in English, parents can select passages to tell rather than reading the whole text aloud.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
Richards, Laura Elizabeth Howe, 1850-1943 AuthorLaura Elizabeth Howe Richards (1850–1943) was an American writer of children's literature and biography. Public information is limited, and few details of her life are recorded here, yet her work offers a clear sense of her range. She wrote children's stories such as Captain January and Toto's Merry Winter, told in a bright, warm style suited to young readers, and also produced biographical writing, including Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910, which traces a life and its era. The collection holds 45 of her works, spanning children's fiction and biography, with historical portraits such as Abigail Adams and Her Times, showing a writer who combined popular narrative with careful attention to historical sources.