Pelham — Volume 01

Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron, 1803-1873Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.4

Word count: 134K words
Chapters: 14

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.Pelham — Volume 01 by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton LyttonAuthor: Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron, 1803-1873,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Mar 1, 2005

Editor's review

Pelham — Volume 01 is the opening volume of a representative novel by the English writer Baron Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a work of English literature released by Project Gutenberg as a free eBook. As the starting portion of the full novel, this volume lays out the characters, establishes the setting, and sets the narrative tone, making it useful to readers studying the nineteenth-century English novel, especially the tradition of so-called "silver-fork fiction." The Gutenberg edition is easy to obtain, complete in text, and convenient to search and copy, making it suitable as a base text for reading and citation. One thing to keep in mind is that this volume is only one quarter of the whole work; read on its own, it leaves the plot feeling unfinished, and reading it together with the following three volumes is recommended. In addition, the language is nineteenth-century English, whose sentence structure and vocabulary differ from contemporary English, so non-native readers may need notes or a dictionary. Overall, this is a work suited to the study of literary history and to practice in reading English originals, rather than a popular novel driven by strong plot.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Undergraduate and graduate students studying the nineteenth-century English novel and literary history
English learners who wish to read classics in the original and practice reading long texts
Readers interested in depictions of Victorian social customs and aristocratic life
Teachers who need free public-domain English texts for teaching or citation

Not a good fit for

Readers who want a complete, self-contained story and do not plan to read the later volumes
Readers who prefer fast-paced contemporary narrative and lack patience for nineteenth-century prose
Those with weak English foundations and no experience reading full-length novels in the original

Reading tips

Read through this volume first, sorting out the main characters and narrative threads, then go on to Volumes 2 to 4.
Keep a notebook of unfamiliar words and long sentences, noting and looking up nineteenth-century idiomatic expressions as you go.
Read alongside materials on nineteenth-century British social or literary history to help understand the background.
If using it for a course or book club, divide the chapters among members, each responsible for summarizing one stretch of plot and characters.

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

Can this book be read on its own?

You can start with it, but it is better not to stop there. This is the first of the four volumes of Pelham and mainly introduces the characters and sets the background; the plot is not yet resolved. Read alone, it leaves a clear sense of incompleteness, so it is advisable to continue through the later volumes for a full reading experience.

What are the features of the Gutenberg edition?

Project Gutenberg provides a free electronic text that is easy to obtain and can be fully searched and copied, suitable for reading, citation, and teaching. This edition is the English original, with no Chinese notes or introduction, so readers need to prepare their own reference works or supplementary materials.

Can I read it if my English is only average?

The work uses nineteenth-century English, with long sentences and somewhat archaic vocabulary, which poses a certain barrier for non-native readers. A solid foundation in English reading is recommended, or use a dictionary or an annotated edition. If you only want to follow the story, you might first read a Chinese translation and then return to the original.

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

Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron, 1803-1873 Author

Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron Lytton (1803–1873) was an English novelist, playwright and politician. The library holds 220 of his works, spanning a wide range of subjects: the historical novel The Last Days of Pompeii, set against the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79; Rienzi, the Last of the Roman Tribunes, on the Roman tribune Cola di Rienzo; and Eugene Aram, a narrative drawn from a criminal case. He also wrote society novels such as Pelham, the family portrait The Caxtons, and the historical study Athens: Its Rise and Fall; the short tale The Haunted and the Haunters, or The House and the Brain reflects his interest in the supernatural. His style is ornate and his plots elaborate, combining romantic colouring with social satire. Public information is limited, and systematic Chinese-language appraisal of his life and work remains scarce.