Pearl-Fishing Choice Stories from Dickens' Household Words, First Series

Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
338K words
Chapters
34

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Social PanoramaPortrait GalleryFamily BondsDaily ReflectionsHeartwarming NarrativeDickens AnthologyShort StoriesPopular Narrative

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.Pearl-Fishing; Choice Stories from Dickens' Household Words; First SeriesAuthor: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Sep 10, 2015

Editor's review

This book is the first series of stories selected and edited by Dickens during his editorship of Household Words, a typical specimen of Victorian periodical literature. Its value lies not in Dickens's own achievement as a novelist but in the editorial taste of a popular magazine it reveals: the short stories vary in subject, ranging from social observation to moral exhortation and light satire, and their length suits fragmented reading. For readers studying nineteenth-century British periodical publishing, Dickens's editorial role, or the short-narrative tradition, this is a usable primary text. Note that it is an English-language public-domain e-book released by Project Gutenberg, set mainly in plain text without modern annotations; the style is distant from contemporary taste, and some pieces are heavily didactic. Suitable as course supplementary material or for reading out of interest in literary history, not recommended as light fiction to be read straight through.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Start with the table of contents and choose pieces by subject rather than reading from page one in order.
  2. After each piece, note the theme and narrative perspective in two or three sentences for easy comparison.
  3. Read alongside background material on Dickens's editorship of Household Words to understand the selection's intent.
  4. Skip unfamiliar period expressions at first and return to them after finishing the piece, so as not to break the flow.

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

FAQ

Are all these stories written by Dickens? Not all. This book is a collection of stories edited by Dickens as editor of Household Words; the authors include several contributors to the magazine. Dickens took part in the editing and may have had work included, but the book should not be treated as his sole creation.
What English level does it require? It is mid-nineteenth-century periodical English, with long sentences and period expressions; overall it is harder than contemporary popular writing, roughly suited to advanced learners who can read English novels comfortably.
Does this edition have annotations or an introduction? According to the information, this is a public-domain electronic text released by Project Gutenberg, consisting mainly of the original text and usually without modern scholarly annotations or introduction; readers need to verify background information 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

Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 Author

Charles Dickens (Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870) is one of the most influential novelists in the history of English literature. The library holds 115 of his works, including novels, novellas and short stories; representative titles include The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and A Christmas Carol. He was known for serialized fiction, with plot twists and vivid characters, and he used humor and satire to portray Victorian society, paying particular attention to poor children, the lower classes and education, and his works often convey warmth and moral concern. In the library his works are often classified under "inspirational growth," and many of his novels have been adapted for stage and screen and are widely circulated. Public information about the details of his life is limited, so no speculation is offered here.