The Black Robe

Collins, Wilkie, 1824-1889Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.6

Word count: 603K words
Chapters: 61

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 Black Robe by Wilkie CollinsAuthor: Collins, Wilkie, 1824-1889,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Feb 22, 2006

Editor's review

The Black Robe is one of Collins's novels with an ethical dimension, built around the tension between priestly identity and worldly feeling. Collins excels at plotting, and here, while suspense drives the story forward, he dwells more on his characters' inner hesitations and conflicts of belief, so the book is both a readable popular novel and one that leaves moral questions worth pondering. This edition is in the original English, a public-domain text from Project Gutenberg, with clean formatting and no copyright concerns, suitable for reading in the original. For readers familiar with The Woman in White and The Moonstone, it fills in the side of Collins's oeuvre concerned with faith and human nature; for those new to Victorian fiction, it offers a sense of how novels of the period handled the relationship between religion and private life. While reading, note the shifts in narrative pace and the values revealed in characters' dialogue.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who enjoy Victorian English fiction and want to broaden their reading of Collins
Literature lovers interested in the conflict between religious identity and personal feeling
Readers who need public-domain English originals for extensive reading or book clubs
Students studying the figure of the clergyman in nineteenth-century English fiction

Not a good fit for

Readers hoping for detective suspense as intense as The Moonstone
Beginners not yet proficient in English who need Chinese annotations
Readers who prefer fast-paced, plot-driven books and have limited patience for ethical discussion

Reading tips

Read through once to grasp the story, then read again closely for the differences of position in characters' dialogue.
Keep pen and paper to note how the main characters view priestly identity, to help trace the lines of conflict.
Read alongside other works by Collins to observe changes in subject matter and narrative focus.
If used for a book club, set discussion topics around whether faith and feeling can coexist.

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.

FAQ

Is this book suitable for non-native English readers?

This is the original English text, in the style of nineteenth-century English fiction, with rather long sentences and fairly formal vocabulary. Readers with a college-level reading ability in English who are used to reading novels in the original can try it; those with less reading experience may first read a more tightly plotted work by Collins to get used to his style, then return to this book.

What is special about this edition?

This edition comes from Project Gutenberg and is a public-domain electronic text, freely available, formatted mainly as plain text, with no modern annotations or introduction. Readers who want background material will need to consult literary histories or scholarly works themselves.

Do I need to know about religious background before reading?

Not necessarily, but some knowledge of the social role of the nineteenth-century English clergyman helps. The conflict in the book largely concerns the boundary between priestly identity and worldly feeling, and basic background knowledge makes it easier to understand the characters' hesitations and choices; without it, one can still begin with the plot.

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About the author

Collins, Wilkie, 1824-1889 Author

Wilkie Collins (1824–1889) was a British novelist best known for his detective and suspense fiction. The library holds 44 of his works, including The Woman in White, The Moonstone, No Name, Armadale, The Law and the Lady and The Dead Secret. He was skilled at multiple-perspective narration and building suspense, and he addressed social issues such as identity, marriage and the law, with intricate plots and vivid characters. The Moonstone is often regarded as one of the pioneering works of modern detective fiction and has had a lasting influence on later mystery writing. It should be noted that the library's information on his nationality and life dates is limited, so this introduction relies mainly on his works and general public knowledge.