Nick of the Woods; or, Adventures of Prairie Life

Robert Montgomery BirdProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
757K words
Chapters
76

Tags

English Originals Historical Fiction Legendary LivesVengeance and GratitudeJianghu FeudHeroismExotic Culture

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.Nick of the Woods; Or, Adventures of Prairie Life by Robert Montgomery BirdAuthor: Bird, Robert Montgomery, 1806-1854,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Nov 7, 2004

Editor's review

Nick of the Woods is a frontier adventure novel by the 19th-century American writer Robert Montgomery Bird, set among the prairie and forest settlements of the Kentucky region. It continues the popular frontier narrative tradition of its day: conflicts between settlers and Indians, pursuit through dense woods, raids and revenge, with the plot driven by action and suspense. As a literary text, its value lies not only in the adventure itself but in the record it provides of how 19th-century American popular literature imagined the frontier and shaped the opposition between "savagery and civilization"; its portrayal of Indians carries obvious period prejudice and requires a critical distance today. For readers studying early American fiction, frontier literature, or the representation of Native peoples, it is an unavoidable sample; for readers simply looking for a tightly plotted adventure story, it offers ample dramatic tension, though the language and narrative pace are old-fashioned and require some patience.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read the preface or introduction first to understand the conventions of 19th-century frontier fiction before entering the main text.
  2. Treat the portrayals of Indians as historical textual analysis and note prejudiced phrasing as you go.
  3. Track the escalation of conflict chapter by chapter and observe how the author creates suspense.
  4. After finishing, compare with other frontier novels to see how character setups and narrative patterns differ.

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
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76

FAQ

Is this book suitable as historical source material? It is first and foremost a novel, not a historical record. It reflects 19th-century American imaginings of the frontier and popular attitudes, but the plot and characters are largely literary inventions and cannot be treated as reliable records of actual historical events or Native American life.
Does the book's portrayal of Indians carry prejudice? It carries obvious period prejudice. The work largely casts Indians as hostile "savages" in service of a heroic settler narrative, a common pattern in 19th-century American frontier literature; it should be read with a critical eye.
How difficult is the English, and what background is needed? The original is 19th-century English with long sentences, and some vocabulary and spelling differ from contemporary usage. Readers with college-level English reading ability who are willing to look up words can finish it; an annotated edition or introduction will make it smoother.

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

Robert Montgomery Bird Author · American · 1806–1854

Robert Montgomery Bird (1806–1854) was an American novelist, playwright, and physician, born in New Castle, Delaware, and died in Philadelphia. Trained in medicine and active in literature, he wrote both for the stage and for the novel. His tragedy The Gladiator was performed more than a thousand times during his lifetime, a sign of his contemporary theatrical influence. His novels include Nick of the Woods, Calavar, The Infidel, and Sheppard Lee, often drawing on the American frontier and the history of the conquest of Mexico, with striking plots and intense atmosphere that reflect early nineteenth-century American literary culture. Six of his works are held in the collection, including the two-volume Sheppard Lee and the two-volume The Infidel. Public information is limited, and details of his life and the reception of his works await further study.