Stop! A Handy Monitor, Pocket Conscience and Portable Guardian against the

Urner, Nathan Dane, 1839-1893Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.3

Word count: 60K words
Chapters: 7

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.Stop! A Handy Monitor, Pocket Conscience and Portable Guardian against theAuthor: Urner, Nathan Dane, 1839-1893,Language: English, Class: BJ: Philosophy, Psychology, Religion: Ethics, Social usages, Etiquette, Religion, Release Date: Nov 3, 2016

Editor's review

This is a short moral exhortation compiled by Nathan Dane Urner, its title likening the book to a "handy monitor, pocket conscience and portable guardian"; it belongs to the public-domain literature of ethics and conduct. Its appeal lies in its compact, itemized form, distilling everyday self-examination into reminders convenient to consult at any time, and it bears the distinct style of nineteenth-century improving literature. Its content leans toward moral maxims and the regulation of behavior rather than systematic ethical argument. It suits readers interested in public-domain exhortation literature, everyday ethics, and self-restraint, and can serve as fragmentary reading to dip into and compare against one's own habits; it may also serve as a supplementary text for studying nineteenth-century popular moral literature.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in nineteenth-century popular moral literature and improving texts
Readers who enjoy aphoristic, itemized short-form reading
Those seeking material for daily self-reflection and reading notes

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting systematic ethical theory or academic argument
Literary readers who prefer continuous narrative and long stories
Readers who need a Chinese translation and do not wish to read the English original

Reading tips

No need to read straight through; dip in at random, reading a few entries at a time and adding brief notes.
Keep a notebook and record entries that strike you alongside your own behavior that day.
Treat it as a source text and note the distance between its era's morality and present-day views.

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

What is this book mainly about?

The material indicates it belongs to ethics and conduct literature and, under the metaphor of a "pocket conscience and portable guardian," offers reminders for everyday self-examination and morality in an itemized, exhortatory form.

Is it suitable for reading continuously from start to finish?

Not really. Exhortatory works of this kind consist of short, independent entries and are better dipped into at random, read in installments, or used as a storehouse of material for writing and self-reflection.

Is there a Chinese edition of this book?

The material indicates the book is in English and has been released by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain e-book. Chinese readers would need English reading ability or tools to assist comprehension.

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

Urner, Nathan Dane, 1839-1893 Author

Nathan Dane Urner (1839-1893) is an English-language author whose birthplace, nationality, and biographical details are only sparsely recorded in publicly available sources. Two of his works are held in this collection. Judging from the surviving titles, his writing has a pronounced advisory and instructive character. One is a handbook for beginners whose title begins with "Never" and whose subtitle, "A Hand-Book for the Uninitiated and Inexperienced Aspirants to Refined," suggests guidance in conduct and manners for readers not yet versed in refined society. The other opens with "Stop!" and is described in its subtitle as "A Handy Monitor, Pocket Conscience and Portable Guardian against the," presenting the book as a portable reminder and moral guardian. Both are compact in form and direct in tone, typical of nineteenth-century popular moral literature meant for casual reading and immediate self-examination. Because public information is limited, details of his life cannot be firmly established, and readers may best approach his writing through these practical, exhortatory booklets.