The Battle of the Strong： A Romance of Two Kingdoms — Volume 5

Sir Horatio Gilbert George ParkerProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.8
Word count
93K words
Chapters
10

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 5 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 5 of Gilbert Parker's five-volume The Battle of the Strong: A Romance of Two Kingdoms, the concluding part of the whole work, released by Project Gutenberg as a free eBook and classified under American and Canadian literature. As the final volume, its main value lies in bringing the fates of the characters and the conflicts between the two kingdoms developed in the first four volumes to a resolution; the emotional attachments and choices of allegiance that readers care about are answered here. Parker's prose continues in the manner of popular historical romance: scenes are finely drawn, dialogue carries much of the narrative, and the plot advances through changes in character relationships. This volume, too, is not a standalone story; read on its own, it loses most of its pleasure. It suits readers who have finished the first four volumes and wish to complete the set, and can also serve as a sample of how early eBooks presented multi-volume long fiction. The language is English, with an archaic flavor that demands some patience with long-form English reading.

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Reading tips

  1. Before reading this volume, quickly review the characters' situations and unresolved conflicts at the end of Volume 4
  2. Watch for how the final volume answers earlier foreshadowing; mark passages that echo previous volumes as you go
  3. After finishing the ending, revisit the opening of Volume 1 to compare the characters' situations before and after
  4. If you pause for a long time midway, spend half an hour reviewing the key points of the previous volumes before continuing

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

FAQ

Is Volume 5 the ending of the whole book? In terms of volume order, Volume 5 is the last of the five volumes of The Battle of the Strong, and it serves to resolve the characters' fates and the conflicts between the two kingdoms. The main threads readers care about reach their conclusion in this volume, so it is better treated as the endpoint of a complete reading than as the first book to start with.
Can I understand this volume without having read the first four? It will be rather difficult. The final volume deals intensively with the character relationships and consequences of events built up earlier, and much of the plot depends on groundwork laid in previous volumes. Read directly, you may see only fragmentary scenes and struggle to grasp cause and effect. It is advisable to read at least Volumes 1 and 4 first before entering this one.
Does this edition include notes or an introduction? According to the information available, this edition is a free electronic text released by Project Gutenberg and is a public-domain work; it usually provides only the main text, without modern editorial notes, introductions, or translations. Readers who want background explanation may consult relevant materials on the author and the work separately.

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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.