The Battle of the Strong： A Romance of Two Kingdoms — Complete

Sir Horatio Gilbert George ParkerProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.8
Word count
700K words
Chapters
71

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Historical ReappraisalPortrait GalleryLegendary LivesLove EntanglementsPower GameComplex HumanityPatriotismPopular NarrativeSocial ObservationCross-Cultural View

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. The Battle of the Strong: A Romance of Two Kingdoms — Complete by Gilbert Parker. Author: Parker, Gilbert, 1862–1932. Language: English. Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature. Release Date: Nov 17, 2004.

Editor's review

This is the complete one-volume edition of Gilbert Parker's The Battle of the Strong: A Romance of Two Kingdoms, a Project Gutenberg public-domain ebook. Its greatest value lies in the continuity of the story: readers need not piece together characters and events across volume breaks and can read straight through the conflict between the two kingdoms and the emotional main line, experiencing the romance narrative pace the author designed. For researchers and classroom teaching, the complete edition is convenient for quotation and close reading, and it is also suitable for comparison with the separate-volume edition to observe how serial publication affected chapter structure and reader expectations. It should be noted that this is a late nineteenth-century English romance novel whose language style is distant from contemporary popular fiction, whose plot unfolds slowly, and whose characterization bears the marks of its era. When reading, first grasp the main character relationships, then observe how the kingdom conflict intertwines with individual fates, so as to understand the work's place in the popular romance tradition.

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Reading tips

  1. Before starting, map the main characters and the relationship between the two kingdoms to lower the entry barrier
  2. Proceed chapter by chapter and keep brief plot notes to follow the main line of the romance narrative
  3. Read alongside the separate-volume edition to observe how serial breakpoints affect pacing
  4. When encountering long sentences in English, identify the main clause first, then return to modifiers

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

FAQ

Should I choose the complete edition or the separate-volume edition? For reading the story through, choose the complete edition: the plot is continuous and there are no breakpoints to piece together. For publication-history research or studying the serial format, the separate-volume edition has more material value. The two can be used together: read the complete edition first for the overall picture, then use the separate-volume edition to observe differences in chapter breakpoints and narrative pacing.
How difficult is this novel to read? It is a public-domain English novel of above-average difficulty. The language is late nineteenth-century literary English with many long sentences and descriptions; the plot does not move quickly and has the dramatic treatment typical of romance fiction. Readers with some experience of long English novels can attempt it; beginners are advised to use annotations or introductory materials.
Is this book suitable for classroom discussion or paper citations? Yes. The complete one-volume edition is convenient for close reading and locating quotations, and is suitable for textual analysis in courses on late nineteenth-century popular romance fiction and American, British, and Canadian literature. When citing, note the Project Gutenberg electronic edition and the specific volume and chapter so others can verify.
Do I need to know the author's background before reading? No specialized study is necessary beforehand, but some knowledge of Gilbert Parker's era and the romance tradition helps in understanding the work's narrative conventions. You may read the work first and then supplement with background on the author and period, so that background information does not prejudge your reading of the text.

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About the author

Sir Horatio Gilbert George Parker Author · Canadian · 1862–1932

Sir Horatio Gilbert George Parker (1862–1932), known as Gilbert Parker, was a Canadian author and politician. Born in Ontario, he worked as a teacher and journalist before settling in London. He is known for novels depicting the lives of French Canadians, notably Pierre and His People and The Seats of the Mighty, the latter held in the library as a complete edition and in several volumes. From 1900 to 1918 he served as a Member of the British House of Commons, making him one of the few Canadian-born figures to achieve distinction in both literature and politics. His works often draw on Canadian history and French-Canadian society, with romantic narrative and attention to character and local setting. The library holds 134 of his works; classification information is limited, as are public records of the details of his writing.