The Complete Works of Artemus Ward — Part 4: To California and Return
Charles Farrar BrowneProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019
Rating 3.1- Word count
- 109K words
- Chapters
- 11
Tags
English Originals Essays and Miscellany TravelogueRail TravelLight ReadingHumor ReliefDocumentary NarrativePopular NarrativeSocial ObservationGold Rush EraLocal CustomsSummary
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 Complete Works of Artemus Ward — Part 4: To California and Return by WardAuthor: Ward, Artemus, 1834-1867,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Jun 1, 2002Editor's review
This part of The Complete Works of Artemus Ward is a travel section built around the experience of going to California and returning. Ward was a nineteenth-century American humorist whose writing is known for exaggeration, irony, and colloquial narration; here he combines travel observations with comic invention, so readers can glimpse early American western transport and town life while also feeling the rhythm of newspaper humor of the time. Its value lies not in systematic historical knowledge but in the light manner in which it presents the travel mentality and jokes of an era. It suits short leisure reading or use as supplementary material for studying American humor literature. Readers need to adjust to nineteenth-century English usage and some cultural allusions no longer common today; it is best read as a collection of travel sketches rather than a strict travelogue.Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers interested in nineteenth-century American humor literature and newspaper essays
- General readers curious about early American western travel observations
- Learners who need short English texts for extensive reading practice
- Readers who enjoy irony, exaggeration, and colloquial narration
Not a good fit for
- Readers expecting systematic knowledge of California history and geography
- Readers unaccustomed to nineteenth-century English and old-fashioned humor
- Readers who need the complete Ward works or a detailed annotated edition
Reading tips
- Read the contents and chapter titles first, then read in stages by travel phase rather than too much at once.
- Mark unfamiliar place names or allusions and look them up together after finishing a piece.
- Read some passages aloud to feel the rhythm and tone of Ward's colloquial humor.
- For English study, after each piece retell the joke or observation in two or three sentences.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971Project 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
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
FAQ
Is this book the complete works of Ward?
No. This is Part 4 of The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, themed To California and Return. It contains only pieces related to that journey, not the complete works as a whole.Does reading it require much historical background?
Systematic historical knowledge is not necessary. The book involves some nineteenth-century American place names, transport, and newspaper culture; looking up what you do not understand is enough and will not prevent you from grasping the overall humorous tone.Is it suitable as English learning material?
It can serve as extensive reading material, but the language includes nineteenth-century colloquialisms, spelling variants, and period allusions, so it is not for beginners. It is best attempted after reaching intermediate or higher English reading ability.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
Charles Farrar Browne Author · American · 1834–1867Artemus Ward (1834–1867), whose real name was Charles Farrar Browne, was an American humorist born in Waterford, Maine. He worked early on as a typesetter and newspaper editor, and in 1858, in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, he created the ignorant traveling-show impresario “Artemus Ward.” Under that pen name he went on to publish writings and give stage lectures, gaining great fame. His works mostly use this character as narrator, generating humor through misspellings, faulty grammar, and naive boastfulness while satirizing the manners and follies of American society. The library holds eight of his works, including the various parts of The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, covering essays, stories, war subjects, a California travel account, and London correspondence. He died of illness in Southampton, England, in 1867 at the age of thirty-three.