Sweet Mace: A Sussex Legend of the Iron Times

Fenn, George Manville, 1831-1909Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.1
Word count
788K words
Chapters
79

Tags

English Originals Historical FictionForeign Literature Suspense ThrillerVillage SecretHistorical LegendFate and FortuneLegendary TalesAncient StyleFolk CustomsIron Age

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.Sweet Mace: A Sussex Legend of the Iron Times by George Manville FennAuthor: Fenn, George Manville, 1831-1909,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Nov 29, 2010

Editor's review

George Manville Fenn was a prolific 19th-century British novelist. Sweet Mace is set in Sussex and subtitled "A Sussex Legend of the Iron Times," making it a legend with local color and historical atmosphere. Its value lies not in grand narrative but in presenting the kind of regional legend Victorian readers enjoyed: local scenery, historical background, and characters' fates intertwined. The free Project Gutenberg edition makes this public-domain work easy to obtain. It is suitable as supplementary material for English literature students studying 19th-century popular fiction and regional legends, and for readers interested in Sussex local history and English regional literature. Note that the language bears the marks of its time and the plot moves quite differently from contemporary novels, so readers seeking a fast pace may find it slow. Read it with an eye to genre study, attending to how it constructs local identity and historical imagination.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Learn about Sussex's geography and history before reading the main text; the local color will then be clearer.
  2. Read it as a genre sample, noting how the author uses local scenery to create a legendary atmosphere.
  3. Read it alongside other 19th-century English regional legends to identify common techniques of the type.
  4. English learners can read slowly chapter by chapter, excerpting passages describing local scenery as language material.

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

FAQ

Is "A Sussex Legend of the Iron Times" a work of historical research? No. According to the materials, it is classified under English literature; it is a legend set in Sussex with historical atmosphere and local color, belonging to literary imagination rather than rigorous historical research. Read it as fiction, not as a historical source.
How difficult is the English in this book? As a 19th-century British novel, it has longer sentences and a slower narrative pace, with period-tinged vocabulary, making it overall harder than modern popular reading. It suits readers with experience of long English fiction who are willing to read slowly and closely; beginners may find it difficult.
Does the electronic edition include annotations or an introduction? According to the materials, this is a free electronic edition released by Project Gutenberg, usually consisting mainly of the public-domain original text and generally without modern scholarly annotations or introduction. Readers needing background knowledge should consult materials on Sussex local history and 19th-century English literature themselves.

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

Fenn, George Manville, 1831-1909 Author

George Manville Fenn (1831–1909) was a British author whose biographical details remain limited in publicly available sources. The library holds 127 of his works, including The Little Skipper: A Son of a Sailor, The Silver Canyon: A Tale of the Western Plains, and Sappers and Miners: The Flood beneath the Sea. Most center on youthful growth and adventure, often set at sea, in mining districts, or on the western plains. He also wrote such biographical work as George Alfred Henty: The Story of an Active Life. His writing emphasizes plot momentum and the shaping of character in young readers, and is commonly classified as inspirational coming-of-age fiction, holding a place in the tradition of juvenile adventure novels.