Miss Crespigny

Burnett, Frances Hodgson, 1849-1924Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.0

Word count: 211K words
Chapters: 22

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.Miss Crespigny by Frances Hodgson BurnettAuthor: Burnett, Frances Hodgson, 1849-1924,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: May 6, 2018

Editor's review

Miss Crespigny is an English novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett (author of The Secret Garden and Little Lord Fauntleroy), made available as a free ebook by Project Gutenberg. Burnett excels at vivid female characters and family relationships, and this book continues her fine psychological portraiture and warm yet tension-filled storytelling—well suited to readers who want to encounter late 19th-century Anglo-American popular literature in the original. As a public-domain electronic text, it is easy to read on a tablet or phone and works well as supplementary extensive reading for English literature courses. Note that this is the original English edition, and the Gutenberg version is text-only, with no Chinese annotations or introduction, so readers need some foundation in English reading. If you have read Burnett's major works and want to explore further, or are looking for an English novel of moderate length that can be read in sections, this book deserves a place on your list.

Who it's for

A good fit for

English-language readers who have read Burnett's major works and want to explore her other books
Students in English or literature courses who need extensive reading material in late 19th-century Anglo-American fiction
Readers of original English texts who enjoy nuanced female psychological portraiture and family-ethics themes
Readers accustomed to fragmented reading of public-domain English novels on electronic devices

Not a good fit for

Beginners with limited English reading ability who need Chinese annotations or a translation
Readers who prefer strongly plotted, fast-paced suspense or action fiction
Researchers who need scholarly annotations, textual scholarship, or introductory materials

Reading tips

Read through one chapter first to gauge the language difficulty, then decide between intensive and extensive reading to avoid giving up midway under vocabulary pressure.
Keep a vocabulary notebook for recurring character titles and period expressions to help clarify relationships.
Draw on your experience with other Burnett works to compare how she portrays female characters.
Use the ebook's search function to locate passages where characters first appear, and build a character list before reading.

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 the original English?

This is the original English ebook released by Project Gutenberg, with English text and no Chinese translation or annotations. It suits readers with some English foundation who are willing to read the original; if you need a Chinese version, you will have to look for a translation separately.

Can I read this directly without having read other Burnett works?

Yes. This is a standalone story that does not depend on prior events from other works. However, Burnett's style is delicate and slow-paced; if you are unfamiliar with the narrative rhythm of late 19th-century Anglo-American fiction, it is advisable to sample the opening pages before deciding whether to continue.

How should I read the electronic edition?

The text from Project Gutenberg can be read on a phone, tablet, or computer and is suitable for reading in sections. Since there are no built-in annotations, it is best to use a dictionary tool alongside it, and to skim the table of contents and the passages where characters first appear beforehand to establish a basic framework.

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

Burnett, Frances Hodgson, 1849-1924 Author

Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849–1924) was an author of English-language children's literature whose works are often categorized in Chinese contexts as inspirational coming-of-age stories. This library holds 49 of her works, including her best-known titles A Little Princess, The Secret Garden, and Little Lord Fauntleroy, as well as versions and school editions centering on Sara Crewe. Her writing usually places children at the center, telling stories of how they keep their dignity, draw on imagination, and grow through hardship or sudden change, in a warm and sympathetic tone. Public information is limited, so her biographical details are not elaborated here; yet the repeated publication and adaptation of these works show that her portraits of girls and boys have circulated widely and left a lasting influence on later children's coming-of-age narratives.