Ragged Lady — Complete cover

Ragged Lady — Complete

Rating 3.5
Word count
482K words
Chapters
49

Tags

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. Ragged Lady — Complete by William Dean Howells. Author: Howells, William Dean, 1837-1920. Language: English. Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature. Release Date: Oct 24, 2004

Editor's review

Ragged Lady — Complete is a full-length novel by Howells. Centering on a young woman of humble origins as she moves between provincial and urban settings, it presents a complex picture of class, courtship, and self-perception in late nineteenth-century America. Howells is known for gentle irony and finely observed psychological detail; the plot unfolds at an unhurried pace, the dialogue has a lived-in texture, and the novel offers telling observations on respectability anxiety and moral choice amid class mobility. As a public-domain ebook, it serves well as an introduction to American realist fiction and as a full text for readers studying Howells's narrative style. Readers might note how the heroine adapts to and resists different household environments, and how the narrator regards social decorum.

Who it's for

A good fit for

  • Readers who enjoy late nineteenth-century American realist fiction
  • Students of Howells and American literary history
  • Readers interested in class mobility and women's development
  • Translators or thesis writers needing a public-domain English novel

Not a good fit for

  • Readers who prefer fast-paced, plot-driven web fiction
  • Beginners unaccustomed to the pacing of nineteenth-century long-form narrative
  • General readers looking for a Chinese translation

Reading tips

  1. Read the whole novel first to grasp the main line, then revisit the heroine's shifts in mindset after each move.
  2. Pair it with social histories of the late nineteenth-century United States to understand the etiquette and class context.
  3. Mark passages where the narrator's irony is evident and consider Howells's measured use of gentle satire.
  4. For course use, group discussion by household scenes around the heroine's dependence and autonomy.

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
  48. 48
  49. 49

FAQ

Is this the complete version or an excerpt?
The title states Complete; it is the full-length text, not an excerpt or abridgment, and can support discussion of the whole structure and ending.
How difficult is the English, and is it suitable for non-native readers?
The English is late nineteenth-century literary English, with long sentences and much social-etiquette vocabulary; non-native readers should have upper-intermediate to advanced reading ability and may benefit from notes and background materials.
How does it relate to Howells's other works?
It belongs to the same line of his American realist writing, concerned with class and moral questions in everyday life; read alongside his representative novels to observe continuities in subject and tone.

Comments

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About the author

William Dean Howells (1837–1920) was an American author and literary editor, with 107 works held in the collection. His writing spans novels, travel books, memoirs, and literary essays, and his representative works include My Mark Twain, Indian Summer, A Boy's Town, A Modern Instance, and A Hazard of New Fortunes. Howells drew on close observation of everyday life, writing in a plain style with gentle irony and attending to moral questions and human situations amid social change; his travel book Venetian Life and his memoir Literary Friends and Acquaintance record his journeys and personal recollections of American literary figures. Public information is limited, so biographical details are not elaborated here; readers may turn to the works above to learn about his subjects and style.

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