The Borough

Crabbe, George, 1754-1832Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.9

Word count: 384K words
Chapters: 39

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 Borough by George CrabbeAuthor: Crabbe, George, 1754-1832,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Mar 1, 2004

Editor's review

George Crabbe was a poet at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who depicted rural and small-town life in blank verse. The Borough sketches a town's inhabitants through a series of character portraits and scene narratives, in a cool tone with a moralizing eye. The work does not aim for romanticized pastoral imagery but presents poverty, hypocrisy, and human weakness in ordinary town life, occupying a distinctive place in the English narrative poetry tradition. This edition is a free Project Gutenberg electronic text, easily accessible to readers. For those studying non-canonical poetry of the British Romantic period, social customs, or narrative verse technique, it offers a worthwhile sample for close reading; general readers will need to adjust to its length and the pace of verse narrative, and are advised to read alongside a biography of the poet or background material on the period.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Literature students studying eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English poetry
Readers interested in town customs and character-sketch narrative
Enthusiasts seeking to broaden their reading of non-canonical Romantic-era poets

Not a good fit for

General readers accustomed to the pace of modern fiction who lack patience for verse narrative
Casual readers looking for tightly plotted works with strong dramatic conflict

Reading tips

Read in sections by character or scene; each stands on its own, so there is no need to finish it in one sitting.
Familiarize yourself with Crabbe's historical context and the blank-verse tradition beforehand to better grasp his cool tone.
Start with the character sketches to get a feel for the narrative method, then read the whole work.

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 The Borough a novel or a poetry collection?

It is a narrative poem written in blank verse that depicts town life through a series of characters and scenes. It is not a prose novel, so readers need to adjust to the rhythm of the verse and the narrative style.

What is distinctive about Crabbe's poetry?

Crabbe depicts town and country life in a cool, realistic manner, avoiding romanticization and focusing on character and social setting, which sets his style apart from that of his contemporaries.

Is this electronic edition suitable for research citations?

The Project Gutenberg edition can be used for reading and preliminary research, but for academic citation you should check authoritative scholarly editions and note the page numbers and version information of the electronic text.

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About the author

Crabbe, George, 1754-1832 Author

George Crabbe (1754–1832) was an English poet. Eleven of his works are held in this collection, including Poems, The Borough, George Crabbe: Poems, Volumes 1–3, The Parish Register, Tales, and The Library. Public information about his life is limited, so biographical details are omitted here; his surviving works show him excelling in narrative verse that depicts rural and small-town life and attends to the circumstances and fates of ordinary people. His style is realistic and restrained, combining moral observation with sympathy. By bringing everyday scenes into poetry and using story to portray groups of characters, he occupied a distinctive place in the transition from classical to Romantic poetry in England, and his texts offer later readers a vivid picture of local social life in his time.