Journal of a Soldier of the Seventy-First, or Glasgow Regiment, Highland Light Infantry

AnonymousProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.6
Word count
192K words
Chapters
20

Tags

English Originals Military Frontline AccountHistorical ReappraisalNapoleonic WarsScottish RegimentsMilitary LifePersonal NarrativeMilitary ChronicleSoldier's Diary19th CenturyWartime Memory

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.Journal of a Soldier of the Seventy-First, or Glasgow Regiment, Highland LightAuthor: Anonymous,Language: English, Class: DC: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: France, Andorra, Monaco, Release Date: Jun 7, 2015

Editor's review

This is an anonymously published soldier's journal recording the military experiences of an ordinary soldier of the 71st (Glasgow Regiment) Highland Light Infantry, covering military operations in France and surrounding regions during the Napoleonic Wars. Unlike generals' memoirs, its value lies in its grassroots perspective: marches, billeting, wounds and illness, supply, comradeship, and battlefield observations are all written in a plain, even rough style. Readers can sense the triviality and cruelty of everyday war rather than the heroic aura of grand narrative. As a Project Gutenberg English public-domain eBook, the text preserves the language habits of its time, and some spellings and expressions require adaptation. It is suitable as supplementary material for military history, social history, and diary literature, helping readers understand how ordinary soldiers experienced war. When reading, one should note the historical limitations imposed by the author's anonymity and the possible biases of personal memory.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. First learn the basic background of the 71st Regiment and the Napoleonic Wars before reading the journal.
  2. Read in chronological order, noting march routes and key events as you go.
  3. Compare the soldier's personal observations with formal military history and note the differences.
  4. Focus on everyday details such as supply, wounds and illness, and comradeship, rather than looking only for battle scenes.

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

FAQ

Why is the author anonymous? The book's original title identifies it as an anonymous soldier's journal, and publicly available sources do not provide the exact identity of the author. Anonymity keeps the text focused on ordinary soldiers' experience, but it also limits verification of the author's personal background, and this limitation should be noted when citing the work.
What wartime content does this journal cover? Judging from its classification and title, it concerns military operations in France and surrounding regions and belongs to soldiers' records of the Napoleonic Wars era. Specific campaigns and years should be based on the main text; it is advisable to read it alongside military history rather than infer all its contents from the introduction alone.
Can I read this book if my English is not good? The text is an English public-domain book with old-fashioned expressions and spelling habits, so a weaker English foundation will make it fairly difficult. You can first read a few pages to judge the difficulty, or read slowly with a dictionary and background materials; it is not suitable as an introductory English reader.

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About the author

Anonymous Author

Anonymous is a collective designation used in English-language publishing for works whose authorship is unknown or unsigned, rather than the real name of a single author. The 716 titles attributed to this name include the Gospel of John, Psalms, Romans, Luke, Philippians, and 1 Corinthians from the World English Bible, as well as the Gospel of John and Psalms from the King James Version. Such texts are mainly religious classics and ancient folk traditions that were copied, translated, and compiled over long periods, making their original authors difficult to trace; they therefore circulated anonymously. Public information is limited, and neither nationality nor dates of birth and death can be confirmed. The significance of anonymity lies in focusing attention on the works themselves rather than on authorial identity, and in reminding readers of the collective and variable nature of texts in transmission.