The Spark

DellyProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.0

Word count: 246K words
Chapters: 25

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.L'étincelle by pseud. DellyAuthor: Delly, pseud.,Language: French, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Aug 28, 2009

Editor's review

L'étincelle is a work by the French popular-fiction duo Delly, made available as a free electronic text by Project Gutenberg. Delly are known for popular novels marked by delicate emotion and intricate plots; this book continues their characteristic elaboration of character relationships and emotional conflict, and the title "spark" itself suggests a moment that ignites emotion or fate. As a public-domain e-book, its value lies in giving readers zero-cost access to the narrative style of early twentieth-century French popular fiction and to the rhythm and linguistic pleasures of love stories of that era. It may best be read as a light French reading experience, with attention to how dialogue and emotional turning points are developed. Because this is a scanned and prepared Project Gutenberg edition, the layout and notes are plain; it is suitable as French extensive-reading material, or for readers studying popular literature or learning French. Those expecting in-depth literary analysis and detailed background notes will need to supplement it with other materials.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Learners with some French who want to practice extensive reading through fiction
Readers interested in French popular literature and early sentimental novels
Readers who want free public-domain e-books for light reading
Researchers studying Delly's works or French popular narrative

Not a good fit for

Readers who cannot read the French original and need a Chinese translation
Readers expecting profound literary themes and complex narrative experimentation
Readers who need detailed annotations and a scholarly introduction

Reading tips

Read one chapter first to gauge the language difficulty, then decide between intensive and extensive reading.
Keep a French dictionary or translation tool at hand to look up unfamiliar words and old-fashioned expressions.
Pay attention to dialogue and emotional turning points, and map the main relationship lines.
After finishing, compare it with French popular novels of the same period to appreciate the narrative conventions.

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.

FAQ

Is this book in Chinese or French?

This is the French original, published by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain e-book. There is no Chinese translation in the book; readers need some French reading ability or a translation tool for assistance.

What are the features of the Project Gutenberg edition?

Project Gutenberg provides a free electronic text that mainly preserves the original, with a plain layout and usually no modern scholarly notes or introduction. It is suitable for low-cost reading and language learning, but readers who need detailed background information should consult other reference works.

What kind of author is Delly?

Delly is the pen name used by a French popular-fiction writing duo, known for popular novels on love, family, and emotional themes. This book continues their style of delicately elaborating character relationships and is suitable as a primary text for understanding French popular literature.

What level of French is needed to read this book?

An intermediate level of French reading ability is recommended, sufficient to understand common narrative sentences and dialogue. If vocabulary is limited, read extensively with a dictionary first, focusing on the plot rather than every word.

Comments

Find this book

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

Delly Author

Delly is the joint pen name of the French authors Jeanne-Marie Petitjean de La Rosière (1875–1947) and her brother Frédéric Petitjean de La Rosière (1876–1949). Public information about their true identities is limited. Under this pen name they co-wrote more than a hundred romance novels that were highly popular between 1910 and 1950, making them a representative pair in French popular fiction. The library holds four of their works, including L‘étincelle, L‘Exilee, Entre Deux Ames, and Esclave... ou reine?, whose themes mostly revolve around emotional entanglements, women’s circumstances, and turns of fate, with accessible and fluent plots typical of popular romance. Representative titles such as The Servant or the Queen and Between Two Souls are also often mentioned, reflecting the pen name’s enduring influence in the French mass-reading market in the first half of the twentieth century.