The Battle of the Strong： A Romance of Two Kingdoms — Volume 1

Sir Horatio Gilbert George ParkerProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.8
Word count
124K words
Chapters
13

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 — Volume 1 by Gilbert ParkerAuthor: Parker, Gilbert, 1862-1932,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Aug 1, 2004

Editor's review

This is Volume 1 of Gilbert Parker's The Battle of the Strong: A Romance of Two Kingdoms, a historical romance published in parts. Framed by political and military conflict between two kingdoms, the work unfolds the characters' fates and emotional entanglements; Volume 1 mainly establishes the background, introduces the core characters, and plants the seeds of later conflict. Parker's narration shows clear features of Victorian popular fiction: detailed scene description, sharply divided good and evil characters, and plots driven by coincidence and dramatic turns. For readers studying Canadian literature or colonial themes, this volume can serve as a sample of the popular narrative modes of the time. Note that this is only Volume 1 and the story is incomplete; readers who want the full picture will need to find the later volumes. While reading, pay attention to how the author uses the love line to connect political oppositions, and to the groundwork this first volume lays within the overall structure.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Before reading, confirm whether later volumes are available to avoid stopping midway
  2. Make a separate character list for Volume 1, recording who appears and which side they are on
  3. After finishing Volume 1, write a plot summary before moving on to the next volume
  4. Use a map to understand the geographical setting of the confrontation between the two kingdoms

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

FAQ

Can this volume be understood on its own? Volume 1 mainly establishes the background and introduces characters, and the plot is not resolved by the end. Reading it alone gives you the opening but not the complete story, so it is best read together with the later volumes.
Why is this book marked as Volume 1? According to the information, the title includes Volume 1, indicating that it is the first part of a work published in volumes. Such nineteenth-century novels were often issued in volumes because of their length, with the plot continuing across volumes.
Is this book similar in style to another work by the author? Both works are historical romances by Gilbert Parker, both dealing with conflict between colonies or kingdoms, and their narrative styles are similar. However, the specific plots and characters are entirely different, so they can be read separately and need not be read in order.

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

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.