Our Gift

Teachers of the School Street Universalist SundayProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.3

Word count: 129K words
Chapters: 13

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.Our Gift by Teachers of the School Street Universalist Sunday School. BostonAuthor: Teachers of the School Street Universalist Sunday School. Boston,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Jan 1, 2004

Editor's review

This is a children's book written by the teachers of the Universalist Sunday School on School Street, Boston, and falls under the juvenile belles lettres category of the public-domain ebook project. Its value lies not in complex plotting or ornate prose but in the snapshot it offers of the texts used for children's education and moral instruction in American Sunday schools from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. The contents bear clear marks of their era and of religious education, making the book suitable as supplementary material for research on the history of children's literature, religious education, or American social and cultural history. It is best read as a historical document rather than as children's literature in the contemporary sense. For readers curious about the sources of public-domain ebooks or interested in the language style of early English children's literature, this book offers a light but authentic sample. It is not long, is written in English, and suits short reading sessions or selected pieces.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Scholars or students researching the history of American children's literature and Sunday school readers
Readers interested in the language style of late nineteenth-century English children's literature
Readers seeking public-domain English texts for language learning or textual analysis
Enthusiasts who collect or study Project Gutenberg public-domain resources

Not a good fit for

Young readers expecting complete plots and the appeal of contemporary children's stories
Readers seeking systematic religious doctrine or theological exposition
Those who find reading the original English difficult and have no auxiliary tools

Reading tips

Read the preface or table of contents first to understand the book's structure and purpose, then select individual pieces.
Read it as a historical text, noting its moral instruction and period attitudes.
Read it alongside materials on the American Sunday school movement to deepen understanding.
When encountering archaic expressions in the English original, skip over them rather than looking up every word.

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 a bedtime story for modern children?

No. It was written by Sunday school teachers and bears the religious and moral-instruction character of the late nineteenth to early twentieth century. It is better read as a historical document or as material for the history of children's literature than as a contemporary children's storybook.

What level of English is needed to read this book?

The text is in English with period features, and some expressions differ from contemporary English. It suits readers with intermediate or higher reading ability who can use a dictionary; those with weaker English may wish to start with introductory materials before sampling the text.

What is this book's relation to Project Gutenberg?

It is one of the public-domain ebooks in the Project Gutenberg collection, part of the free electronic texts the platform provides. The release record for the electronic edition is given as January 1, 2004, and readers can obtain the original text through the platform.

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

Teachers of the School Street Universalist Sunday Author · American

Teachers of the School Street Universalist Sunday is not a single named author but a collective byline for a group of Sunday school teachers of the Universalist tradition in the United States. Public information about the members' individual identities, the group's founding, and the period of its activity is quite limited; what is known is that they wrote religious educational material under a collective name, and their representative work is Our Gift. Judging from the byline and the attribution of the work, their writing was intended for Sunday school teaching and served the transmission of religious knowledge and the nurturing of faith, showing a clear church-education character. Such collectively written materials generally emphasize readability and instructional value, making them convenient for teachers to use in class and suitable for students to read outside it. Owing to limited historical sources, the group's specific members, division of writing work, and the circulation of its works remain to be further studied, and its historical significance lies mainly in the practice of compiling Universalist religious educational readers.