Standard Selections cover

Standard Selections

Rating 2.9
Word count
841K words
Chapters
85

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.Standard Selections by Fulton, Trueblood, and TruebloodAuthor: ,Language: English, Class: PN: Language and Literatures: Literature: General, Criticism, Collections, Release Date: Nov 27, 2006

Editor's review

This is an early Project Gutenberg electronic anthology in English, falling under the category of general language and literature, criticism, and collections. It serves as a sample of how public-domain texts were digitized. Its value lies not in the uniqueness of any single piece but in showing the early practice of Project Gutenberg in organizing historical documents into free electronic texts: plain typesetting, prioritizing readability, and preserving the original chapter structure for easy searching and citation. When reading, one may focus on the anthology's arrangement, selection of pieces, and language style to observe the editorial taste of early twentieth-century English literary anthologies. As a free electronic text for the public, it is better suited as supplementary material for reference and close reading than as a systematic literary history textbook. Readers interested in digital humanities, public-domain resources, and early e-book forms may browse it as a small case study.

Who it's for

A good fit for

  • Readers interested in public-domain e-books and the history of Project Gutenberg
  • Liberal arts students needing samples of English literary anthologies for reference
  • Digital humanities enthusiasts studying early electronic text typesetting and editorial conventions
  • English learners wishing to practice extensive reading with free English texts

Not a good fit for

  • Beginners expecting systematic literary history explanations or detailed annotations
  • Readers needing contemporary translations or Chinese-English parallel reading
  • Casual readers expecting a bestselling-style continuous narrative

Reading tips

  1. Read the table of contents and editor's conventions first to understand the scope of selections, then choose two or three pieces for close reading.
  2. Use it as a reference book; when citing, verify the original page numbers and titles.
  3. Compare it with other public-domain English anthologies to observe differences in selections across eras.

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
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82
  83. 83
  84. 84
  85. 85

FAQ

Is this book a complete Chinese translation?
No. This is an English electronic text released by Project Gutenberg. The language is English, and the content is a literary anthology, not a Chinese translation. Readers need some English reading ability.
Is it suitable for reading from cover to cover?
It can be read through, but reading by selection is more recommended. Anthology texts are scattered in length; looking at the table of contents first and choosing pieces of interest is more efficient and better suits its reference nature.
Why does the introduction mention Michael Hart?
The introduction describes the founding background of Project Gutenberg: Michael Hart pioneered the practice of free e-books in 1971. This explanation concerns the platform rather than the book's content and can be regarded as version source information while reading.

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Project Gutenberg is not a single author but a nonprofit digital library founded by Michael Hart in 1971 and one of the world's earliest free ebook platforms. It relies on volunteers to digitize, proofread, and freely distribute public-domain works and is now operated by the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Its collection contains 2,692 works, mainly religious texts, epics, and story collections, including the King James Bible and the Douay-Rheims volumes, the epic Mahabharata, a literal translation of the Arabian Nights, and Danish editions of the Old and New Testaments. Public information is limited, and its nature is closer to a public-interest compiling and dissemination body; these texts are open to the public, easy to consult and circulate, and have had a profound influence on the spread of ebooks and the preservation of public-domain resources.

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