Nuttie's Father

Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary), 1823-1901Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.4

Word count: 653K words
Chapters: 66

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. Nuttie's Father by Charlotte M. Yonge. Author: Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary), 1823-1901. Language: English. Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature. Release Date: May 1, 2003

Editor's review

Nuttie's Father, by the prolific Victorian author Charlotte M. Yonge, is an English novel centered on family relationships and moral growth. The title signals the father-daughter bond that drives the story, which follows the emotional distance, misunderstandings, and reconciliation between young Nuttie and her father, while also touching on relatives, social class, and the choices of responsibility. Yonge's writing bears the clear imprint of its era: the narration is unhurried and attentive to her characters' inner lives and sense of propriety, reading more like a finely detailed domestic genre painting. As a public-domain Project Gutenberg eBook, it is freely available and serves as a useful supplementary read for understanding nineteenth-century English domestic fiction. The book does not rely on strong dramatic conflict; its value lies in the patient unfolding of family ethics, and readers willing to slow down will appreciate how the characters come to understand one another within their constraints. For researchers, it also offers a way to observe how women writers of the period handled domestic subjects and moral instruction.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who enjoy nineteenth-century English domestic fiction and the depiction of family relationships
Researchers interested in Victorian women's writing and moral subjects
English learners willing to read a public-domain novel slowly and build literary fluency
General readers drawn to father-daughter relationships and family-ethics narratives

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking tight plotting and strong suspense
Those unaccustomed to nineteenth-century pacing and didactic tone
Beginners with limited English reading experience who need modern annotations

Reading tips

Read the opening chapters first to sort out names and family relationships before settling into the main plot.
Watch the shifts in tone in each interaction between Nuttie and her father, and mark key passages as you go.
If the pace feels slow, read a fixed amount each day and retell one chapter in your own words afterward.
Read alongside background material on Victorian family values to understand the context of the characters' choices.

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

What is the main appeal of this book?

Its appeal lies in the delicate unfolding of the father-daughter relationship and in the hesitation and change characters undergo between family duty and personal feeling. Rather than driving the story with dramatic events, the author develops it gradually through everyday conversation, visits among relatives, and moral choices, which suits readers who like slow-paced character fiction.

Can I read it without a background in Victorian literature?

Yes, but patience is needed. The story itself centers on family and kinship and does not depend on specialized knowledge; the difficulties lie mainly in period language, narrative pacing, and the moral assumptions of the time. A dictionary and a background introduction will help, and there is no need to grasp every detail on a first reading.

What should I keep in mind when reading the electronic edition?

The Project Gutenberg edition is a public-domain electronic text and usually has no modern introduction or annotations, and its formatting is plain. Use reading software that lets you adjust font size and look up words, and check unfamiliar terms and historical background yourself for a smoother reading experience.

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

Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary), 1823-1901 Author

Charlotte M. Yonge (1823–1901) was a prolific nineteenth-century British novelist and writer of children's literature, with 65 works held in this collection. Public information is limited, but her representative works reveal the range of her writing: family novels such as The Heir of Redclyffe and The Daisy Chain centre on everyday life and moral growth; A Book of Golden Deeds and The Little Duke, aimed at young readers, recount historical stories and heroic character; she also wrote a life of John Coleridge Patteson, missionary bishop of the Melanesian Islands. Her works generally deal with family, faith, duty and history in a gentle, realistic style, and were influential among Victorian readers, with many long surviving as reading for young people.