Poker Jim, Gentleman, and Other Tales and Sketches

Lydston, G. Frank (George Frank), 1858-1923Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.4
Word count
457K words
Chapters
46

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Adventure JourneyJianghu FeudGambler CharacterHuman NatureGentlemanly ConductShort StoriesWestern TalesPopular NarrativeAmerican WestFrontier Customs

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.Poker Jim, Gentleman, and Other Tales and Sketches by G. Frank LydstonAuthor: Lydston, G. Frank (George Frank), 1858-1923,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Mar 11, 2019

Editor's review

This is a collection of short stories and sketches by the American writer and physician G. Frank Lydston, classified under American and Canadian literature. Lydston's primary profession was medicine, and his writing often reflects an observational perspective on human nature, marginalized social conditions, and moral gray areas. This collection is led by “Poker Jim, Gentleman” and includes several stories and sketches that are short, vivid in scene, and suited to fragmented reading. Its appeal lies in characterization and narrative pacing rather than complex structure; it offers sample value for readers interested in the late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century American popular short story. Note that some ideas and language in the book bear clear marks of their era; today's readers should view them historically rather than applying contemporary standards directly. Overall it suits casual reading as short fiction or as supplementary material for studying American popular literature, but it is not a classic must-read.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read each piece independently; order is unnecessary. Pause after each to reflect on characters and scenes.
  2. When encountering era-bound prejudices, make brief notes distinguishing historical context from present-day judgment.
  3. Start with the title story “Poker Jim, Gentleman,” then decide whether to continue with the other sketches.

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

FAQ

Is this book suitable as English learning material? It can serve as extensive reading material, but the language carries late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century usage, and some words and sentence patterns are no longer common. Focus on understanding the stories rather than imitating the style sentence by sentence.
The author is a physician. Does that affect the book's content? The author did have a medical background, and his writing often attends to human nature and social gray areas, but this book is a collection of stories and sketches, not medical writing. Readers may note his observational perspective but need not treat the work as medical literature.
Do the ideas in the book seem outdated today? There are traces of the era. Certain value judgments and expressions reflect the social context of the time. Read with a historical perspective, understanding the background rather than taking them as a basis for contemporary views.

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

Lydston, G. Frank (George Frank), 1858-1923 Author

Lydston, G. Frank (George Frank Lydston, 1858–1923) is an English-language author about whom relatively little biographical information has survived; publicly available sources are quite limited, and his nationality, education, and specific professional career cannot be reliably confirmed. Only one of his works is held in this collection, namely Poker Jim, Gentleman, and Other Tales and Sketches. As the title suggests, it is a collection of short stories and sketches centered on a character named Poker Jim, combining narrative with character portrayal in a style that suggests popular fiction. Owing to the scarcity of historical records, it remains difficult to assess the full range of his writing style or his place in literary history; readers seeking a deeper understanding would need to consult the original text alongside other reliable sources.