The Cleverdale Mystery or, The Machine and Its Wheels: A Story of American Life

W. A. WilkinsProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.3
Word count
391K words
Chapters
40

Tags

English Originals Mystery and Suspense American SocietyPower GameHuman NatureCriminal PsychologySocial Critique

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 Cleverdale Mystery; or, The Machine and Its Wheels: A Story of American LifeAuthor: Wilkins, W. A.,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Mar 14, 2013

Editor's review

Set against the backdrop of American social life, this is a mystery novel whose plot unfolds around the metaphor of “the machine and its wheels,” interweaving mystery investigation with observations on how society operates. W. A. Wilkins writes in the manner of popular fiction, giving equal weight to the advancement of clues and to character relationships; the book thus serves as a sample of nineteenth-century American popular literature. Its highlight lies in using the “machine” image to describe social structures and interpersonal networks, so that while following the case readers also sense the details and tone of American social life of the time. As a public-domain electronic text, it has no modern annotations or introduction, so readers must situate it in its historical context and adjust to its narrative pace on their own. It is best used both as literary-historical material and as leisure reading: enjoy the puzzle-solving as genre fiction, and note the social attitudes and narrative conventions it reflects.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read through once for plot, then revisit how the “machine and wheels” image maps onto the character relationships.
  2. Keep track of characters and clue points as you read to clarify the mystery’s structure.
  3. Consult background material on nineteenth-century American society to understand the novel’s details of life and attitudes.
  4. The English original suits a fixed daily portion of extensive reading to preserve narrative continuity.

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
  20. 20
  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
  39. 39
  40. 40

FAQ

What kind of mystery story is this? A popular mystery novel set against American social life, centering on the investigation of a mystery and using “the machine and its wheels” as a recurring metaphor that links the case’s clues to social structure and character relationships—characteristic of nineteenth-century American genre fiction.
What does “the machine” in the title mean? Judging from the title and subtitle, “the machine and its wheels” is a metaphor for the workings of society, used to observe where characters stand within it and how they are implicated; its specific meaning should be understood through the character relationships and the unfolding of events in the plot, not reduced to a single interpretation apart from the text.
How difficult is the English, and is it suitable for extensive reading? It is written in the style of nineteenth-century English popular fiction, with longer sentences than modern works, but it is clearly plot-driven; readers with intermediate English or above can attempt extensive reading. It is advisable to read the opening chapters first to adapt to the rhythm of the language, then decide whether to read closely or straight through.

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About the author

W. A. Wilkins Author

W. A. Wilkins is an author about whom little public information is available; the name appears in bibliographic records as "Wilkins, W. A.," and his life, nationality, and dates of birth and death cannot be confirmed. Only one work can currently be identified: The Cleverdale Mystery or, The Machine and Its Wheels: A Story of American Life. As the title suggests, the novel combines mystery with realistic observation, unfolding a narrative around the Cleverdale mystery while using the image of "the machine and its wheels" to look at how American social life operates, hinting at entanglements among social structures, organizational workings, and individual fates. Because reviews and biographical materials are scarce, the author's other writings, the specific features of his style, and the work's contemporary influence remain difficult to examine in detail; readers can only approach this single work to sense its narrative orientation and concern with its times.