Mrs. Tree

Richards, Laura Elizabeth Howe, 1850-1943Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.2

Word count: 218K 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.Mrs. Tree by Laura Elizabeth Howe RichardsAuthor: Richards, Laura Elizabeth Howe, 1850-1943,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Nov 9, 2009

Editor's review

Mrs. Tree is a work by the late nineteenth-century American children's author Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards, offered as a free electronic edition by Project Gutenberg. Richards was known for children's stories and family themes, and this book continues her warm, humorous narrative style. Centered on a vividly drawn elderly woman, it sketches a warm picture of small-town life through everyday incidents and intergenerational exchanges. The language is brisk and the chapters short, making it a suitable entry-level text for reading in the original English and a good way to sense the rhythm and values of nineteenth-century American family narrative. For readers studying the history of children's literature, women's writing, or American local life, this public-domain book offers a light but meaningful sample. As you read, watch for the humor and irony in the dialogue and for how the author uses a child's perspective to observe the adult world. As a free ebook, it is better suited to casual browsing than systematic study.

Who it's for

A good fit for

English learners who want light practice reading original texts
Readers interested in nineteenth-century American children's literature and family stories
Literature enthusiasts studying women writers and local narrative
Readers who like short chapters and public-domain books for fragmented reading

Not a good fit for

Novel readers expecting complex plots or strong dramatic conflict
Beginner readers who need a Chinese translation or bilingual text
Readers seeking author biography and in-depth research materials

Reading tips

Read one or two chapters a day: first follow the plot, then go back to the humorous expressions in dialogue
Keep a vocabulary notebook for nineteenth-century American family usage and colloquial expressions
After finishing, compare with other children's stories by the same author to see how her narrative style continues
If using it for English study, try reading dialogue passages aloud to feel the rhythm and tone

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 suitable for English beginners to read directly?

The language is generally brisk and the chapters are short, but the book was written in the late nineteenth century, so some wording and sentence patterns are distant from modern English. Readers with an intermediate foundation can try it; beginners are advised to use a dictionary or read introductory material first, so that too many unfamiliar words do not dampen their interest.

What are the features of the Project Gutenberg edition of Mrs. Tree?

Project Gutenberg provides a free electronic text based on public-domain content, easy to obtain on a computer or e-reader. It is suitable for quick reading and searching, but usually contains no modern notes or introduction, so readers need to supply background knowledge themselves.

Can reading this book help me understand nineteenth-century American life?

The work is set in family and small-town daily life and can reflect some details and values of life at the time, but it is literature, not historical source material. Readers can use it as impressionistic material; for a rigorous understanding of history, they should still consult specialized social history research.

Comments

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About the author

Richards, Laura Elizabeth Howe, 1850-1943 Author

Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards (1850–1943) was an American writer of children's literature and biography. Public information is limited, and few details of her life are recorded here, yet her work offers a clear sense of her range. She wrote children's stories such as Captain January and Toto's Merry Winter, told in a bright, warm style suited to young readers, and also produced biographical writing, including Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910, which traces a life and its era. The collection holds 45 of her works, spanning children's fiction and biography, with historical portraits such as Abigail Adams and Her Times, showing a writer who combined popular narrative with careful attention to historical sources.