The Childhood of King Erik Menved: An Historical Romance

Bernhard Severin IngemannProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
1.2M words
Chapters
121

Tags

English Originals Historical Fiction Danish RoyaltyFate and FortuneCourt IntriguePower GameAntiheroPatriotismGrowing UpMedieval TurmoilTurbulent EraBoy King

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 Childhood of King Erik Menved: An Historical Romance by IngemannAuthor: Ingemann, Bernhard Severin, 1789-1862,Language: English, Class: PT: Language and Literatures: Germanic, Scandinavian, and Icelandic literatures, Release Date: Jul 5, 2011

Editor's review

This is a historical romance by the Danish author Ingemann, set in the childhood of the medieval Danish king Erik Menved, and part of the Nordic historical romantic tradition. Its value lies not in strict fidelity to historical fact but in its romantic portrayal of royal childhood, court relationships, and period atmosphere, allowing readers to experience the historical imagination of medieval Denmark through the characters' fates. As a public-domain ebook, it gives researchers and literature lovers low-cost access to the original text and serves as supplementary reading for the study of Nordic historical fiction, Romantic literature, and English translation. Readers should keep in mind the distance between the novel and historical fact and treat it as literature rather than a historical source. The pacing has the expansive quality of nineteenth-century fiction, making it suited to quiet, careful reading and to comparative reading alongside background materials on Danish history.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Start by learning the basic historical background of Erik Menved before entering the narrative.
  2. Read the novel as a literary text and consult specialized historical works when questions of fact arise.
  3. Compare it with other Nordic historical novels to observe differences in romantic technique.
  4. The English original is long; read it chapter by chapter and note character relationships as you go.

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
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
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  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
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  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82
  83. 83
  84. 84
  85. 85
  86. 86
  87. 87
  88. 88
  89. 89
  90. 90
  91. 91
  92. 92
  93. 93
  94. 94
  95. 95
  96. 96
  97. 97
  98. 98
  99. 99
  100. 100
  101. 101
  102. 102
  103. 103
  104. 104
  105. 105
  106. 106
  107. 107
  108. 108
  109. 109
  110. 110
  111. 111
  112. 112
  113. 113
  114. 114
  115. 115
  116. 116
  117. 117
  118. 118
  119. 119
  120. 120
  121. 121

FAQ

Is this novel suitable as a source on Danish history? Not as a direct historical source. It is a historical romance; although it takes the childhood of a real king as its subject, it emphasizes romanticized narrative and character portrayal, and historical details should be verified in specialized historical works.
Can I read it without any background in Nordic history? Yes, but it is advisable to spend a little time first learning the basic outline of medieval Danish kingship and noble relations; otherwise you may easily be confused by the names, places, and court relationships.
What are the features of this edition? This is a public-domain English ebook released by Project Gutenberg, easy to obtain and search for free, suitable for reading, citation, and textual research, but it contains no modern scholarly annotations.

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

Bernhard Severin Ingemann Author · Danish · 1789–1862

Bernhard Severin Ingemann (1789–1862) was a Danish novelist and poet, born on the island of Falster and a leading figure of Danish Romanticism. Influenced by German Romanticism and by Walter Scott, he wrote a series of historical romances set in Denmark, notably The Childhood of King Erik Menved and the three-volume King Eric and the Outlaws, whose plots draw on medieval Danish royal conflicts and folk legend. His poems, including the morning and evening hymns, circulated widely in Denmark, and he is ranked alongside Hans Christian Andersen. Four of his works are held here, commonly classed as inspirational coming-of-age reading.