The Bracelets

Edgeworth, Maria, 1767-1849Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.9

Word count: 65K words
Chapters: 7

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 Bracelets by Maria EdgeworthAuthor: Edgeworth, Maria, 1767-1849,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Feb 1, 2004

Editor's review

"The Bracelets" is one of Maria Edgeworth's children's stories, continuing her approach of carrying moral education through everyday incidents. The story revolves around the object of the bracelet and, through children's interactions and choices, discusses honesty, self-restraint, and responsibility. Edgeworth's narration is clear and the text short; dialogue and scenes stay close to home and school life, making it suitable as an introductory text for understanding the didactic tradition in British children's literature from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century. Its value lies not in plot complexity but in showing how middle-class families of the time used stories to shape children's character. As a Project Gutenberg public-domain ebook, it is convenient for classroom excerpts and comparative reading. While reading, note how the narrator guides judgment and how the object becomes a vehicle for moral testing in the story.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Learners studying the moral-education tradition in British children's literature
Teachers who need short English texts for classroom excerpt-based teaching
Readers interested in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century family and children's life
Lower-intermediate readers who prefer short, clearly narrated texts for extensive English reading

Not a good fit for

Readers of popular fiction seeking strong plot conflict and suspense
Contemporary readers expecting modern views of childhood and diverse narrative perspectives
Advanced researchers who need detailed historical notes and author biography materials

Reading tips

Read the story through once, then revisit the key passages where the bracelet appears and trace its moral-symbolic role.
Read it alongside other Edgeworth children's stories and identify the common structure of her didactic narratives.
For classroom use, excerpt dialogue passages and discuss how the narrator evaluates characters' behavior.
English learners can copy short sentences describing children's psychology and family etiquette for imitation writing practice.

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

What age of children is this story suitable for?

The original was written for child readers of its time, but its language and moral context are distant from today. For contemporary children, it is better read with teacher or parent guidance, explaining the background along the way; for independent reading, it is recommended for middle-school students and above with a good foundation in English.

What is the core theme of the story?

Around the choices prompted by the bracelet, the story discusses honesty, self-restraint, and responsibility toward others. It does not advance through complex plot but presents character questions through small tests in everyday interactions, embodying Edgeworth's typical way of using stories for moral education.

Why choose the Project Gutenberg edition?

This edition is free and easy to access, suitable for classroom distribution and text searching. But it usually has no modern annotations, so readers must supply the author's background and period context themselves; when citing, version information should also be checked, and attention paid to possible typesetting differences in the electronic text.

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About the author

Edgeworth, Maria, 1767-1849 Author

Maria Edgeworth (Edgeworth, Maria, 1767-1849) was an English-language writer active from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century. Details of her life are limited in publicly available sources, but her works circulated widely. The collection here holds 20 of her works, including Castle Rackrent, The Absentee, The Parent's Assistant Or, Stories for Children, and the multi-volume Tales and Novels. She is known chiefly for novels and stories for children, often dealing with Irish gentry life, family relations, and the education of the young, combining realism with moral instruction and conveying lessons through everyday scenes and vivid characters. Castle Rackrent is regarded as an early family-history narrative of the Irish landlord class and has influenced later regional fiction, while her children's stories stress learning through reading. Overall, her writing bridges the novel and children's literature, with an influence that extended into the nineteenth century.