Our Home in the Silver West: A Story of Struggle and Adventure

Stables, Gordon, 1840-1910Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.8
Word count
462K words
Chapters
47

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Nature ObservationAdventure JourneyFamily BondsInspirationComing of AgeGrowing Up

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 Home in the Silver West: A Story of Struggle and Adventure by Gordon StablesAuthor: Stables, Gordon, 1840-1910,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Mar 9, 2009

Editor's review

This is a coming-of-age adventure story by the Victorian novelist Gordon Stables, set against the backdrop of "the home in the Silver West" and following a family as they settle, struggle, and face danger in an unfamiliar land. It continues the author's characteristic blend of outdoor adventure and domestic warmth, combining the tension of survival challenges with the everyday details of pioneer life, and serves as a useful sample of late nineteenth-century British and American boys' adventure fiction. As a free electronic text from Project Gutenberg, it preserves the original work and gives readers direct access to public-domain English literature. It is best read as a period piece: its colonial pioneering perspective and gender assumptions call for scrutiny through a modern lens. Readers interested in boys' literature, adventure fiction, or English language learning may find it a light and engaging supplement, though not a strict historical or geographical reference.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the chapter headings first to grasp the plot, then read chapter by chapter to ease the pressure of a long English text.
  2. Make brief notes on unfamiliar place names or period expressions and look them up after finishing, so as to avoid frequent interruptions.
  3. Read the book's pioneer attitudes alongside contemporary works and keep your own critical notes.
  4. If using it for English study, read one or two chapters a day and copy out three to five expressions to build a feel for the language.

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

FAQ

Is this book suitable for English beginners to read directly? Not really for absolute beginners. The original is late nineteenth-century English, with period features in syntax and vocabulary, and the long narrative requires a certain vocabulary. Intermediate or higher reading ability is suggested, or start with a bilingual or simplified edition before returning to the original text.
Why do some ideas in the book feel uncomfortable to read? The work dates from the Victorian era and carries the colonial pioneering perspective and gender assumptions of its time. These are period limitations rather than deliberate preaching by the author. Read them as material for understanding nineteenth-century social attitudes while keeping your own judgment; there is no need to accept them wholesale.
What is special about this edition? It comes from Project Gutenberg as a free public-domain electronic text and largely preserves the original content and language, with no modern rewriting or abridgement notes. It suits readers who want access to the original text, but annotations and introductions are limited, so readers need to fill in the background themselves.

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

Stables, Gordon, 1840-1910 Author

Gordon Stables (1840-1910) was a prolific English-language author active in the late nineteenth century. Public information about his life is limited, and his nationality and educational background remain to be further verified; yet the twenty-five works held in the collection show a remarkably wide range of subjects. He wrote observational natural history such as Cats: Their Points and Characteristics, adventure stories for young readers such as Born to Wander: A Boy's Book of Nomadic Adventures and Crusoes of the Frozen North, nature sketches like In Touch with Nature: Tales and Sketches from the Life, and documentary works such as Medical Life in the Navy. His writings often draw on natural knowledge, seafaring experience and polar exploration, with a bright, straightforward tone that stresses adventure and the formation of character, giving him a place among inspirational coming-of-age reading.