The Diva's Ruby

Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion), 1854-1909Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.5

Word count: 635K words
Chapters: 64

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 Diva's Ruby by F. Marion CrawfordAuthor: Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion), 1854-1909,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Sep 23, 2012

Editor's review

The Diva's Ruby is a novel by F. Marion Crawford, released here by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain eBook. Crawford was a prolific novelist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and his works often feature European settings, emotional entanglements and dramatic plots. The book revolves around a female singer and a ruby, combining love, suspense and exotic atmosphere, and is a good sample for understanding late Victorian popular fiction. As a public-domain eBook, it is free to obtain and easy to read across devices, making it especially suitable for readers interested in literary history, English learners, and those who want low-cost access to nineteenth-century English novels. Readers may notice how the author handles desire and turns of fate, and may also place the book in the market context of popular literature of its time. Note that the book is in the original English, and its language bears the marks of its era; some expressions may feel somewhat remote to contemporary readers.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Literature lovers who enjoy late nineteenth-century English popular novels
English learners who want to read public-domain English classics for free
Readers studying Crawford's works or late Victorian fiction
Casual readers who prefer plots intertwining love and suspense

Not a good fit for

Beginners who need a Chinese translation or bilingual edition
Readers who prefer modern fast-paced narratives and concise style
Readers impatient with nineteenth-century English expression

Reading tips

Read the first chapter to gauge the narrative pace and language difficulty before deciding to read straight through or selectively.
Keep an electronic dictionary handy for unfamiliar words so vocabulary does not interrupt reading.
Extend reading with background on Crawford's life and late nineteenth-century popular fiction.
For study purposes, retell the plot and character relationships in your own words after 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.

FAQ

Is this book in Chinese or English?

This is the original English edition, released by Project Gutenberg. There is no Chinese translation in the book, so readers need some English reading ability. The language shows features of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and some sentence patterns and vocabulary differ from contemporary English.

What are the features of the Project Gutenberg edition?

Project Gutenberg was an early provider of free eBooks, and its editions consist mainly of public-domain works that are free to obtain and easy to read across devices. This edition generally preserves the original text without modern notes or introductions, so readers must handle the historical background and unfamiliar expressions themselves.

Can I read this directly without having read other works by Crawford?

Yes. This is a standalone novel and does not depend on prior events from other works. However, Crawford's works often share his habitual European settings and dramatic emotional structures; knowing his style in advance makes it easier to grasp the narrative focus while reading.

Comments

Find this book

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

Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion), 1854-1909 Author

F. Marion Crawford (Francis Marion Crawford, 1854–1909) was a notably prolific English-language novelist. The library holds 46 of his works, spanning a wide range of subjects: long novels set in Italy, such as Saracinesca, Greifenstein and Fair Margaret: A Portrait; the two-volume Ave Roma Immortalis, which portrays the history and monuments of Rome; the Arabian tale Khaled, A Tale of Arabia; and atmospheric ghost stories including The Upper Berth and Wandering Ghosts. These works show a writer skilled at evoking foreign and historical settings, with clear narrative structure and steady plotting, accomplished both in popular long fiction and in tales of the strange. His supernatural stories in particular have been favored by later anthologies and have had some influence on the English ghost-story tradition. Because public information is limited, biographical details are not elaborated here; the outline above rests on the works in the library's holdings.