Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble

Edward FitzGeraldProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.8
Word count
375K words
Chapters
38

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Portrait GalleryLove EntanglementsSlow ReadingDaily ReflectionsTender SentimentPrivate LettersVictorian Era

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.Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) by Edward FitzGeraldAuthor: FitzGerald, Edward, 1809-1883,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: May 14, 2007

Editor's review

This book is a collection of letters written in his later years by the English poet and translator Edward FitzGerald to the actress Fanny Kemble, spanning the years 1871 to 1883. These letters were not written for publication, and so they retain the ease and candor peculiar to private correspondence; readers can see how a reclusive man of letters discusses reading, friendship, old age, and the small affairs of daily life. FitzGerald is best known for his translation of the Rubáiyát, and the letters occasionally reveal his literary tastes, but more often they present the image of an ordinary man who is gentle and slightly melancholy. For readers familiar with the Victorian literary circle, these letters offer a side view of lived texture; for general readers, they can be read as essay-like material, an experience of how a nineteenth-century English gentleman conversed. It should be noted that this is a public-domain ebook in the original English, that reading it requires some command of English, and that the epistolary form lacks a continuous plot, so it suits a mixture of slow reading and skipping about.

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with one complete letter to get a sense of the tone, then read selectively in chronological order; there is no need to read straight through.
  2. Keep a simple background note of the people and works mentioned in the letters for easy cross-reference.
  3. Read two or three letters a day with a dictionary at hand, using the correspondence as extensive English reading material.

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 in Chinese or English? This is a public-domain ebook in the original English released by Project Gutenberg; the text is in English and there is no Chinese translation. Readers need some command of English or should use a dictionary while reading.
Is a collection of letters meant to be read from cover to cover? Epistolary works have no continuous plot, and reading page by page can become tiring. A better approach is to read selectively in chronological order, or to skip about around people and topics of interest, treating each letter as a standalone short piece.
Can I read it without knowing who FitzGerald is? Yes. The letters mostly concern everyday exchange and reading impressions and do not depend on specialized knowledge. Still, knowing beforehand about his connection to the Rubáiyát and the Victorian literary background will make the names and allusions in the letters easier to understand.

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

Edward FitzGerald Author · English · 1809–1883

Edward FitzGerald (1809–1883) was a British writer and poet, born on 31 March 1809 in Suffolk and died on 14 June 1883 in Norfolk. A graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, he lived a retiring life devoted to reading, letter-writing and literary translation. He is best known for his free rendering of the Rubaiyat of the Persian poet Omar Khayyam, a version that prizes rhythm and atmosphere over literal fidelity and has become a classic of English literature. His letters are likewise admired for their clear, natural and companionable prose, as shown by the two volumes of his Letters and his correspondence with Fanny Kemble held in this collection. His work thus centres on poetic translation and private letters, written in a restrained, unhurried style that has influenced later English poetry and translation practice.