Sussex Gorse: The Story of a Fight

Kaye-Smith, Sheila, 1887-1956Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.9
Word count
801K words
Chapters
81

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Social ObservationRural ChangeFate and FortuneFamily FeudLove EntanglementsComplex HumanityMoral DilemmaHeartwarming NarrativeEnglish CountrysideFemale Perspective

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.Sussex Gorse: The Story of a Fight by Sheila Kaye-SmithAuthor: Kaye-Smith, Sheila, 1887-1956,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Apr 15, 2018

Editor's review

This novel comes from the English writer Sheila Kaye-Smith and belongs to the rural vein for which she is known. The gorse of the title is the thorny shrub common in the English countryside, while the subtitle, The Story of a Fight, tells the reader that the book turns on a concrete and sustained conflict, perhaps over land, livelihood or human relations, rather than abstract philosophical speculation. Kaye-Smith wrote for years about rural life in Sussex, and her touch usually falls where the natural environment and human fate intertwine; the value of this book therefore lies not only in the plot but in its rendering of local scenery, country ethics and human resilience. For readers familiar with English regional fiction it is a sample of early twentieth-century rural narrative; for those who want to experience a sense of place through an English original, its length and difficulty are relatively manageable. Note that this is an English-language eBook from Project Gutenberg with no Chinese translation, so the English original is the text to read. It suits careful chapter-by-chapter reading in quiet hours, with attention to how landscape description answers the development of the conflict.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the subtitle and chapter titles first to grasp the thread of the conflict, then settle into the text.
  2. Keep pen and paper to record place names and relationships; in rural novels the cast is often linked by locality.
  3. Slow down at long passages of landscape description and note how they correspond to the characters' situation.
  4. For language study, copy sentences describing the countryside chapter by chapter and practise retelling them.

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

FAQ

Is this book in Chinese or English? This is an English-language eBook from Project Gutenberg; the text is the English original with no Chinese translation, and the title and subtitle are kept in English. To follow the story you need some English reading ability; for English study or research into the original wording, you can use it directly.
What does 'Gorse' in the title mean? Gorse is a thorny shrub common in the English countryside, often found on waste ground and at the edges of pastures. In the title it is both a geographical marker and a symbol of country life, indicating that the story takes place in a specific natural setting rather than an abstract social stage. Watch for the image as it recurs in the text.
Will it be hard to read without translator's notes or background introduction? As a public-domain eBook it usually comes without notes or an introduction. Readers are advised to learn a little about the geography of Sussex and the social background of the early twentieth-century English countryside before starting. For local terms, use a dictionary and maps; there is no need to check every word, which would break the rhythm of reading.
Is it suitable as English study material? It can serve as extensive reading, but not as a beginner's textbook. The language is largely narrative description with a literary cast of sentence, suited to learners who already read English reasonably well and want to feel the texture of an original. Work chapter by chapter: read through for the gist first, then look back at long sentences; do not insist on translating every line.

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About the author

Kaye-Smith, Sheila, 1887-1956 Author

Sheila Kaye-Smith (1887–1956) was an English novelist. Public information about her is limited, but her fiction is largely set against the rural life and landscapes of England, especially Sussex. Five of her works are held in this collection, including Sussex Gorse: The Story of a Fight, Joanna Godden, The Four Roads, The Three Furlongers, and a study of John Galsworthy. She was skilled at depicting country life and human destinies with delicate detail, and her plots often revolve around family, land, and personal struggle, marked by a strong sense of place and a realistic style. Her work holds a place in the twentieth-century English regional novel tradition and offers some insight into rural society and women's lives of her time.