Rainbolt, the Ranger; or, The Aerial Demon of the Mountain

Coomes, Oll, 1845-1921Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.6
Word count
196K words
Chapters
20

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Legendary HeroAdventure JourneyJianghu FeudHeroismPopular NarrativeAmerican West

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.Rainbolt, the Ranger; or, The Aerial Demon of the Mountain by Oll CoomesAuthor: Coomes, Oll, 1845-1921,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Jul 3, 2019

Editor's review

This is a typical late nineteenth-century American popular adventure novel, a product of the dime-novel tradition. The story revolves around mountain tracking and aerial phenomena, and the "Aerial Demon" of the title signals its suspenseful and bizarre flavour. The author, Oll Coomes, is known for fast-paced plotting, frequent changes of scene, and decisive action, suiting readers who want excitement rather than deep characterisation. From a literary-historical perspective, such works are important material for understanding how the American popular reading market took shape, and they show how Western narrative and sensational elements were combined. Today the pleasure lies mainly in the tension of the plot and the period atmosphere rather than in polished prose. As a public-domain e-book, it is convenient to read in sections on screen. It is best treated as a specimen of genre fiction: note the narrative formulas and period attitudes, and do not demand modern standards of character depth.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read quickly along the plot line, enjoying the pace first and then returning to savour the period features
  2. Jot down recurring genre elements such as tracking, spectacle, and the conflict of good and evil
  3. Read alongside brief materials on the history of American popular literature to understand the market context
  4. English readers can read the action scenes closely to feel the rhythm of old-fashioned adventure narrative

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

FAQ

Is this a complete, standalone story? It is a standalone adventure novel, with a plot built around mountain tracking and aerial phenomena. Readers do not need to read other works first, but they should be prepared for the fast pacing and stock characters common in nineteenth-century popular fiction.
Why is it said to belong to the dime-novel tradition? Dime novels were cheap popular reading in nineteenth-century America, drawing mass readers mainly with adventure, detective, and Western stories. This book shows the features of that tradition in its choice of subject, density of plot, and character setup, and is well read as a specimen of genre fiction.
What reading level is the original English suited to? The sentences are mainly narrative and the overall difficulty is moderate, but it contains old-fashioned expressions and period language. Readers with basic English who are willing to look up words can finish it; if reading for study, it is best to read a plot summary before tackling the original.

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About the author

Coomes, Oll, 1845-1921 Author

Coomes, Oll (1845–1921) is an English-language author about whom very little is publicly known; available sources confirm only his name, birth and death years, and one surviving work. His representative work is Rainbolt, the Ranger or, The Aerial Demon of the Mountain, whose title suggests a tale of adventure and the bizarre, combining a ranger protagonist with an aerial demon of the mountain. It appears to belong to the popular adventure fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Because reliable biographical material is lacking, his nationality, education, career, and the full range of his writing cannot be verified, and only one of his works is held in this collection. For today's readers, his significance lies mainly in offering a sample of the themes and imaginative modes of popular English-language reading of that era, while his style and influence await further historical research and assessment.