Sea Urchins

William Wymark JacobsProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.7

Word count: 267K words
Chapters: 27

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.Sea Urchins by W. W. JacobsAuthor: Jacobs, W. W. (William Wymark), 1863-1943,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jun 25, 2007

Editor's review

Sea Urchins is a short work by the British writer W. W. Jacobs, available as a free e-book in the Project Gutenberg series. Jacobs is known for humor, irony, and surprise endings, and this piece continues his attention to life at sea and ordinary people's fortunes; the language is light and the plot tight, making it a good introduction to late nineteenth-century English short fiction. The e-book is easy to obtain and short enough to finish on a commute or in spare moments. Pay attention to the narrator's tone and the wit in the dialogue to better appreciate the author's gentle mockery of human weaknesses. As a public-domain e-book, it has no modern annotations, so readers must adapt to the usage of the period.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who like English short stories and want an easy introduction to Jacobs's narrative style
English learners who need short English readings for practice
General readers interested in sea-life subjects and humorous, ironic stories

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer long continuous narratives and full character arcs
Beginners who want detailed annotations and background guides
Readers who find nineteenth-century English usage difficult

Reading tips

Read through once to grasp the plot and the ending twist, then go back to the dialogue for foreshadowing.
Skip unfamiliar nautical terms at first and look them up together afterward.
Read alongside other Jacobs stories to appreciate his ending technique.

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 a novel or a short story?

It is a short work by W. W. Jacobs, not long, suitable for reading in one or two sittings, with the focus on plot development and the surprise turn at the end.

Can I understand it without annotations?

The overall plot is not hard to follow, but some nautical terms and period colloquial expressions may need looking up. Read for the plot first, then deal with language difficulties; this will not affect overall comprehension.

Is it suitable for learning English?

It suits learners with some foundation. The text is a public-domain e-book with no grading or annotations, and the sentences are fairly colloquial; it works as extensive reading material but not as the only close-reading textbook.

Comments

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About the author

William Wymark Jacobs Author · British · 1863–1943

William Wymark Jacobs (1863–1943) was a British short-story writer, born in London in 1863 and died there in 1943. In his early years he lived around the Thames docks and was familiar with the lives of sailors and dockworkers, which led him to write a great many humorous sea stories, often in a light and witty tone. His best-known work, The Monkey's Paw, is a classic horror short story included in The Lady of the Barge (1902); noted for its tight suspense and sudden twists, it is still widely anthologized in horror collections. The library holds 109 of his works, including The Lady of the Barge and Others, Ship's Company, A Tiger's Skin, Captains All, and Night Watches; his common category is inspirational growth. Public information is limited and details of his life are largely unavailable, yet his fiction is distinctive in subject, blending humor with horror, and has had a lasting influence on later short-story writing.