!Tention: A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War

Fenn, George Manville, 1831-1909Project Gutenberg · United StatesMar 2023

Rating 3.1
Word count
504K words
Chapters
51

Tags

Motivation and Growth Barrack LifePeninsular WarHistorical BattlefieldWartime AdventureMilitary Coming-of-AgeYouth FriendshipCourage and TrialSense of ResponsibilityYouthful HardshipBoy Soldiers

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.!Tention: A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War by George Manville FennAuthor: Fenn, George Manville, 1831-1909,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: May 8, 2007

Editor's review

This work is a coming-of-age novel for boys set against the Peninsular War, a type of boys' adventure story that George Manville Fenn excelled in. The author wrote many historical adventure books for young readers, and this one continues his approach of placing a boy protagonist within a real historical conflict, using camp life, marches, and battles to show the development of courage, friendship, and a sense of responsibility. For readers familiar with the Napoleonic era, the depiction of soldiers' daily routines and battlefield conditions carries a certain period flavor; for general readers, it reads more as a brisk boys' adventure, with plot driven by encounters and action rather than complex psychological portrayal. As a public-domain ebook, it works well as an introductory sample of nineteenth-century English boys' adventure fiction and as a low-cost way for English learners to engage with original narrative texts. It is best read within the tradition of historical adventure fiction rather than judged by the rigorous standards of modern historical novels.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Learn the basic outline of the Peninsular War first; the period setting becomes easier to enter.
  2. Read it as a sample of the boys' adventure genre, not by the standards of modern historical fiction.
  3. English learners can read one or two chapters a day, noting military and everyday vocabulary to build original-text vocabulary.

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

FAQ

Is this book suitable for English beginners to read directly? Not really for complete beginners or those with little reading experience. It is a nineteenth-century English original, with period features in sentence structure and wording and some military vocabulary. Readers at intermediate level or above who are willing to look up words will find it smoother; beginners are advised to start with adapted or bilingual editions.
Do I need to know about the Peninsular War beforehand? Not systematically, but some basic background helps. The Peninsular War was a military conflict in the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars; knowing this framework makes the marches, camps, and battles easier to follow. Even without it, readers can still follow the boy protagonist's adventure main line.
What does this book share with the author's other boys' adventure novels? Based on the author's known approach, this book belongs to the same category of historical adventure stories for young readers, emphasizing a boy protagonist's experience and growth within a real historical conflict, with plot driven by action and encounters. Readers familiar with his other similar works can view it as a sample within the same stylistic line.

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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.