Jolly Sally Pendleton Or, the Wife Who Was Not a Wife

Libbey, Laura Jean, 1862-1924Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.7
Word count
379K words
Chapters
38

Tags

English Originals Romance Fiction Fate and FortuneMarital StrifeFamily EthicsLove EntanglementsUrban RomanceEthical ControversyIdentity ConstructionMelodramaPopular FictionFemale Perspective

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.Jolly Sally Pendleton; Or, the Wife Who Was Not a Wife by Laura Jean LibbeyAuthor: Libbey, Laura Jean, 1862-1924,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Jul 29, 2009

Editor's review

This work comes from Laura Jean Libbey, an American writer of popular fiction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and belongs to the tradition of sentimental popular novels written for a mass readership of the time. The paradoxical phrase in the title, "the wife who was not a wife," points to a mismatch of identity and marital relationship, a suspense device common in such novels. Libbey's works are marked by fast-moving plots, openly expressed emotional conflict, and clear moral endings, making them a good sample for understanding the history of American popular reading and the conventions of popular literature. For today's readers, their value lies not in literary experimentation but in offering a window onto how women's roles, ideas of marriage, and readers' tastes were imagined a century ago. It is best read as cultural source material rather than as a modern novel, with attention to the recurring narrative formulas of identity mystery, misunderstanding, and reunion, and to how these formulas served the emotional expectations of readers at the time. The Project Gutenberg edition is a public-domain English ebook, convenient for searching and comparative study.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the opening chapters first to grasp how the identity suspense is set up, then watch how the misunderstanding is created and resolved.
  2. Read it alongside other popular novels of the same period and note the recurring narrative formulas.
  3. Mark the choices made by female characters as you read, and observe how they echo or depart from the social expectations of the time.
  4. For language study, read through the plot first, then go back to read the dialogue and psychological description passages closely.

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

FAQ

Is this book a serious literary work? It belongs to the popular sentimental fiction written for a mass readership of the time, not to serious literature in the classic sense. Its value lies more in reflecting the tastes, marital imaginings, and moral expectations of readers a century ago, so it is best read as a sample of popular literature and cultural history rather than judged by modern literary standards.
What does "the wife who was not a wife" in the title mean? This is a suspenseful title typical of popular fiction, hinting at a mismatch of identity or a question of legitimacy in the marriage relationship. The specific plot can only be confirmed by reading the text, but the phrase itself reflects the typical technique of such novels, which drew readers in with relationship mysteries.
How difficult is the English? As popular fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it is mainly narrative and dialogue and is not very difficult overall, though some wording and sentence patterns bear the marks of the era. Readers with intermediate English can get through it with a dictionary, or they can first learn the outline of the plot and then go to the original text.
What are the features of this edition? This is a public-domain English ebook released by Project Gutenberg, a free electronic text convenient for searching, copying, and comparative study. It is not a modern scholarly edition with annotations, so readers should check the edition information themselves; it suits study and research rather than leisure reading that seeks refined typography.

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

Libbey, Laura Jean, 1862-1924 Author

Laura Jean Libbey (1862–1924) was an American writer of popular fiction, though detailed information about her life is limited in publicly available sources. Six of her works are held here: Mischievous Maid Faynie; Pretty Madcap Dorothy Or, How She Won a Lover; Kidnapped at the Altar Or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain; Jolly Sally Pendleton Or, the Wife Who Was Not a Wife; A Dangerous Flirtation Or, Did Ida May Sin?; and Daisy Brooks Or, A Perilous Love. These titles suggest that her writing centred on pert, headstrong young women, courtship, wedding-day upheavals and emotional entanglements, with subtitles often posing a question or hinting at suspense—hallmarks of the popular romance fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her lively titles, nickname-like heroines and plots built on misunderstanding, adventure and romantic turmoil suited the entertainment tastes of a mass readership. Because reliable biographical material is lacking, her nationality, education and personal history cannot be confirmed and are not speculated upon here.