The Day of Wrath: A Story of 1914

Tracy, Louis, 1863-1928Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
362K words
Chapters
37

Tags

English Originals Military StrategyWarfareFate and FortuneLove EntanglementsHeroismSpirit of DedicationPatriotismTurbulent EraSocial ObservationEuropean Theater

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 Day of Wrath: A Story of 1914 by Louis TracyAuthor: Tracy, Louis, 1863-1928,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Sep 3, 2010

Editor's review

This novel by British popular fiction writer Louis Tracy is set against the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 and belongs to the classic pre-war thriller tradition. Tracy excelled at combining historical events with suspenseful pursuit; his plotting is tight, and his characters' fates are interwoven with the tide of the times, giving readers a sense of the tension and hard choices ordinary people faced under the gathering clouds of war. As a free Project Gutenberg ebook, it is highly accessible and serves as a good primer on the social atmosphere and popular literary landscape of the early war years. Readers may focus on the plot or on how the author uses fiction to grapple with a turning point in history. Note that the novel carries a pronounced period style, and its pacing differs from modern fiction; it is best read with an eye to its historical context.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Skim the historical background around the outbreak of World War I in 1914 before entering the plot for a smoother reading experience.
  2. Proceed chapter by chapter, reviewing character relationships and plot threads after each chapter to avoid getting lost in the period prose.
  3. If using the book for English study, mark period vocabulary and long sentences, and infer meaning from context.
  4. After finishing, compare the story with historical facts about World War I and consider how popular fiction negotiates the boundary between historical fact and fictional narrative.

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

FAQ

Is this book a work of history or a novel? It is a novel set against the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. It uses historical atmosphere and events to drive the fates of fictional characters; it is not a rigorous work of historical research, so readers should distinguish literary fiction from historical record.
Can I understand it without knowing World War I history? You can follow the main plot, but knowing the basic background of the war's outbreak in 1914 will make it easier to understand the characters' situations and the narrative tension. Spending a little time on the early war background beforehand will noticeably improve the reading experience.
Why recommend the Project Gutenberg edition? Project Gutenberg offers free ebooks that are easy to obtain and low in cost, making them suitable for extensive reading and a first acquaintance with the work. This edition is in the original English; readers can use any e-reading device but need some English reading ability.
Is the language style difficult? As early twentieth-century English popular fiction, the book contains older expressions, longer sentences, and period vocabulary that differ from modern English. Readers with intermediate English can manage with a dictionary and context; close word-by-word reading is unnecessary.

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

Tracy, Louis, 1863-1928 Author

Louis Tracy (1863–1928) was an English writer of popular fiction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, best known for tightly plotted mystery and adventure stories. His works often revolve around mysterious inheritances, disappearances, mistaken identities, and criminal puzzles, with representative titles including The Wheel O' Fortune, Number Seventeen, The King of Diamonds, The Great Mogul, and The Stowmarket Mystery. He excelled at blending detective reasoning with exotic settings and suspenseful chases, producing fast-paced, incident-filled narratives that were both entertaining and highly readable. The library holds 30 of his works, commonly classified under inspirational growth, though their core remains popular mystery and adventure fiction. Public information is limited, and details of his life remain to be further verified.