Shining Ferry cover

Shining Ferry

Rating 3.5
Word count
473K words
Chapters
48

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.Shining Ferry by Arthur Quiller-CouchAuthor: Quiller-Couch, Arthur, 1863-1944,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Nov 28, 2007

Editor's review

Shining Ferry is a novel by the British author Arthur Quiller-Couch and belongs to the classic canon of English literature. Quiller-Couch is known for narratives set in Cornwall, with a style that combines local color and humanistic concern; this book continues that manner, and the characters and events centered on the ferry carry a gentle legendary air. As a public-domain ebook released by Project Gutenberg, its value lies first in accessibility: readers can obtain free of charge the complete work of an early twentieth-century British novelist, useful for examining where local writing and popular narrative meet in English literature. While reading, note how the author handles the relationship between geographical space and human fate, and the structural role of the "ferry" image in the plot. The book suits extensive reading in English literature and also serves as supplementary reading for readers interested in English regional fiction. Note that this is an English-language original electronic text, formatted according to common public-domain ebook conventions; readers should have a dictionary at hand and be prepared to sort out long sentences.

Who it's for

A good fit for

  • English literature readers interested in English regional fiction and local-color writing
  • Learners hoping to expand their reading of English originals through public-domain ebooks
  • Literature students studying British narrative fiction from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century
  • Readers who enjoy plots organized around spatial images such as ferries and coastlines

Not a good fit for

  • General readers who prefer Chinese translations and are unused to long sentences in English originals
  • Readers expecting modern fast-paced suspense or strong plot momentum
  • Beginners who need annotations, introductions, and detailed background materials

Reading tips

  1. Read the first two chapters through first, noting the characters and places that appear in the ferry scenes, and sketch a character map.
  2. After each chapter, summarize the events and changes in the characters' situations in two or three sentences to help keep up with the narrative pace.
  3. When encountering dialect or local expressions, infer from context first, then check a dictionary, to avoid frequent interruptions.
  4. After finishing, revisit the differences in the ferry descriptions at the beginning and end to appreciate the structural role of the spatial image.

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

FAQ

Is this book in Chinese or English? How difficult is it to read?
This is an English original, a public-domain ebook released by Project Gutenberg. Quiller-Couch's sentences tend to be long, with local color and descriptive narration; the difficulty is roughly upper-intermediate for English literary originals. Readers with a college-level English foundation who are used to long novels can try it; beginners should use a dictionary and slow down.
Why is it recommended to pay attention to the "ferry" image?
The title centers on the ferry, and a ferry usually implies a place of transition, coming and going, and encounters between characters; in a novel it often serves as a node connecting different characters and events. While reading, note where ferry scenes fall in the plot and how characters' situations change before and after the ferry, which helps in understanding the author's narrative design.
Is the Project Gutenberg version suitable for academic citation?
Project Gutenberg provides public-domain electronic texts that are convenient for reading and searching, but academic citation should rely on scholarly editions from authoritative publishers or print editions, with page numbers and edition information verified. For course extensive reading or close-reading exercises, the electronic version is sufficient; for formal papers, find a reliable edition instead.

Comments

Find this book

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

Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863–1944) was an English writer with a substantial body of work, of which 41 titles are held in this collection. His writing covers a wide range: essays on the craft of reading and writing such as On the Art of Reading and On the Art of Writing, and narrative works set against the sea, winter, and the fireside, including The Roll-Call of the Reef, I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales, Two Sides of the Face: Midwinter Tales, and The Laird's Luck and Other Fireside Tales. He also retold fairy tales from the Old French in The Sleeping Beauty and other fairy tales from the Old French, and wrote From a Cornish Window, a book that reflects his attention to the Cornish landscape and local life. Public information is limited and biographical details are hard to verify, but the surviving works show a graceful, unhurried prose that combines the reflective habits of an essayist with a storyteller's pleasure in narrative, leaving its mark on English prose and short fiction.

More by the same author

Top rated in the same category