My Life in Many States and in Foreign Lands, Dictated in My Seventy-Fourth Year

Train, George Francis, 1829-1904Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
473K words
Chapters
48

Tags

English Originals General Biography Business DecisionsEntrepreneur BiographyLegendary LivesAdventure JourneyLife PhilosophyDaily ReflectionsWorld Order19th CenturySocial ObservationCross-Cultural View

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.My Life in Many States and in Foreign Lands, Dictated in My Seventy-Fourth YearAuthor: Train, George Francis, 1829-1904,Language: English, Class: CT: History: Biography, Release Date: Dec 10, 2011

Editor's review

This autobiography was dictated by George Francis Train in his seventy-fourth year and records a life that spanned many states and foreign lands. A participant in nineteenth-century American public life, Train writes with a strongly personal voice and the unmistakable stamp of his era; readers catch glimpses of transportation, commerce, and public life as they then were. The book's value lies not in systematic, rigorous historical scholarship but in the vivid detail of its first-person perspective and the frank tone peculiar to dictated narrative. The free Project Gutenberg edition makes this early English-language biography easily accessible and a useful sample of nineteenth-century American autobiographical style. It is best read as the testimony of an era rather than an authoritative history; background material will help readers appreciate the prejudices and enthusiasms in the narrative. For readers studying oral history, autobiographical literature, or nineteenth-century American social life, this is a firsthand source worth opening.

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with the table of contents and chapter titles to grasp the subject's life stages, then read chapter by chapter
  2. Mark places and dates as you read, and consult maps or chronologies for context
  3. Record subjective judgments separately from verifiable facts to cultivate critical reading habits
  4. Start with chapters on foreign experiences that interest you, then fill in the surrounding context

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
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48

FAQ

Is this a complete Chinese translation? No. This is an English-language public-domain e-book released by Project Gutenberg; the text is in the original English with no Chinese translation. Chinese readers will need some English reading ability or a dictionary and other aids.
How reliable is a dictated autobiography? Dictated narrative carries memory bias and personal standpoint and should not be cited directly as authoritative historical material. Treat it as testimony to an era and as a narrative text; when specific events arise, compare other historical sources and distinguish the subject's subjective judgments from verifiable facts.
Can I read it without background knowledge of history? You can, but comprehension will suffer. The book touches on many parts of nineteenth-century America and on experiences abroad; a general sense of the period beforehand will make reading smoother. Skim an overview of the era first, then enter the text, looking up unfamiliar place names as you go.

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

Train, George Francis, 1829-1904 Author · American · 1829–1904

George Francis Train (1829–1904) was an American entrepreneur and railway speculator known for his bold speculative ventures. He traveled around the world and publicly supported women's suffrage. In his later years he dictated his autobiography, My Life in Many States and in Foreign Lands, Dictated in My Seventy-Fourth Year, recalling his life and travels across various American states and abroad. Only one of his works is currently held in this collection. Public information about his early education, family background, and specific business activities is limited, and many details of his life rest on his own accounts and should be treated with caution. The autobiography is a primary text for understanding nineteenth-century American railway speculation and travel, offering a broad personal perspective marked by its era and serving as a useful reference for studying the social climate and the women's suffrage movement of the time.