Piccolissima

Montgolfier, Adélaïde de, 1789-1880Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.5

Word count: 68K words
Chapters: 7

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.Piccolissima by Adélaïde de MontgolfierAuthor: Montgolfier, Adélaïde de, 1789-1880,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: May 1, 2003

Editor's review

This children's book by the late-18th-century French woman writer Adélaïde de Montgolfier is now available again as a public-domain ebook through Project Gutenberg. It belongs to the category of juvenile literature, is in English, and in both length and subject matter serves as a sample of early children's literature. For readers studying the evolution of European children's reading material in the 18th and 19th centuries, or interested in children's narrative after the French Enlightenment, this book offers a light and direct point of entry. The electronic edition is free to obtain and simply formatted, making it easy to read through quickly on a tablet or e-reader, and it is also suitable as a teaching excerpt or supplementary material for comparative literature courses. It should be noted that this is not a best-selling children's book in the modern sense: its narrative pace and values bear clear marks of its era, and readers would do well to appreciate it as a historical document rather than expect dramatic plotting or contemporary views of childhood.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Scholars studying European children's literature and educational ideas in the 18th and 19th centuries
Literature enthusiasts interested in children's reading material after the French Enlightenment
Students who need public-domain English texts for reading practice
Ebook readers who collect classic public-domain titles from Project Gutenberg

Not a good fit for

Young readers expecting fast-paced contemporary children's stories with strong plots
Beginner readers who need a Chinese translation or bilingual edition
General readers impatient with the historical limitations of old texts

Reading tips

Begin with the prefatory note and author information to establish the historical background of 18th-century French children's reading material, then move on to the main text.
Read ten to fifteen pages a day, taking notes on the educational ideas and narrative techniques to facilitate later comparison.
For research purposes, read alongside contemporary British children's literature to observe differences in writing across countries.
If the English original proves difficult, first read through with the help of a dictionary, then return to close-read key passages.

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 suitable as a bedtime story for children?

It is not well suited to reading the English original directly as a bedtime story. This is a late-18th-century children's book with a slow narrative pace and language marked by its era, and the original is in English. For younger children, an adult should first read through and select passages to retell orally, or wait until the child has some English reading ability before attempting it.

Is the Project Gutenberg electronic edition the same content as a printed book?

Project Gutenberg provides electronic texts of public-domain works, prepared from its proofread public-domain editions. The content is essentially consistent with the main text of the corresponding printed editions, but does not include introductions, notes, or illustrations that modern publishers might add. Readers get a relatively plain original text, which suits those interested in the raw text.

Do I need to know French history beforehand to read this book?

Systematic study of French history is not necessary, but some familiarity with the general background of late-18th-century French society and educational thought will make it easier to understand the views of childhood and moral instruction implicit in the book. General readers can start with the main text and look up background material when questions arise; the barrier to entry is not high.

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About the author

Montgolfier, Adélaïde de, 1789-1880 Author · French · 1789–1880

Adélaïde de Montgolfier (1789–1880) was a French writer from the Montgolfier family. Her work spans memoirs and literary writing, drawing on personal experience and domestic memory in a plain, unhurried style with a distinctly private, autobiographical quality. The library currently holds only one of her works, Piccolissima, and publicly available information is limited, so a full picture of her life and writing cannot yet be given. From what is known, her writing combines documentary and literary impulses: the memoirs center on firsthand observation, while the literary pieces draw on everyday experience and family memory in unadorned, unaffected language. Such writing offers some value for understanding the life and private literary culture of elite French families of her time.