The Colloquies of Edward Osborne, Citizen and Clothworker of London

Anne ManningProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
216K words
Chapters
22

Tags

English Originals Historical Fiction Working ClassFamily BondsGroup BiographyHuman NatureInspirationComing-of-Age EpicMoral DilemmaLondon CitizenSocial ObservationVictorian Era

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 Colloquies of Edward Osborne, Citizen and Clothworker of London by Anne ManningAuthor: Manning, Anne, 1807-1879,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Mar 25, 2016

Editor's review

The Colloquies of Edward Osborne, Citizen and Clothworker of London is a historical work by Anne Manning that tells the story of Edward Osborne, a London cloth merchant, in dialogue form. Manning excelled at weaving historical figures and period atmosphere into her narratives, and this book's "colloquies" structure lets readers experience the life and commercial ethics of sixteenth-century London's citizen class through conversational scenes. The language carries the refined style of nineteenth-century historical fiction and will appeal to readers interested in the social history and civic life of Tudor England. As you read, treat the dialogues as a blend of historical source and fiction, and note how the author uses her characters' voices to stage conflicts of values. This is a public-domain English e-book with no Chinese translation; it suits readers with a reasonable command of English, who may wish to consult background material on English commercial history for support.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Before reading, briefly familiarize yourself with the background of sixteenth-century London cloth merchants' guilds and the citizen class.
  2. Read in sections by dialogue scene, and after each section summarize the characters' positions and the core issues.
  3. Mark historical proper nouns as you go, and look them up together after finishing each chapter.

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

FAQ

What genre is this book? It unfolds in dialogue form and belongs to historical narrative, presenting the life of London citizens and cloth merchants through characters' conversations; it has qualities of both fiction and historical essay.
Can I understand it without a background in English history? You can read it, but your depth of understanding will suffer. It is advisable to first look up basic background on Tudor-era London commerce and guilds, which will significantly improve the reading experience.
Is there a Chinese translation of this book? Sources indicate that this is a public-domain English e-book released by Project Gutenberg, with no Chinese translation mentioned; readers will mainly need to read the English original.

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About the author

Anne Manning Author · English · 1807–1879

Anne Manning (1807–1879) was a British woman writer, born in London and died at Tunbridge Wells; she never married. She was known for fictional historical narratives in diary form, letting historical figures speak in the first person about their daily lives and inner thoughts, with an intimate tone and restrained scholarship. Her representative work, The Household of Sir Thomas More, was widely popular, while Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary tells the story of Milton's wife from Mary Powell's perspective. Her subjects are mostly drawn from English and European history of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and from individual fates caught in religious and political upheaval, as in The Duchess of Trajetto, Jacques Bonneval and The Year Nine: A Tale of the Tyrol. According to available information, she wrote about fifty works in her lifetime, of which seven are held in this collection.