The Invasion cover

The Invasion

Rating 2.9
Word count
586K words
Chapters
59

Tags

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 Invasion by William Le QueuxAuthor: Le Queux, William, 1864-1927,Language: English, Class: UA: Military science: Armies: Organization, distribution, military situation, Release Date: May 18, 2011

Editor's review

The Invasion, by William Le Queux, is an early popular work of fictional invasion narrative, classified under military science. Its value lies not in predictive accuracy but in the way it captures how the English-speaking world of the time imagined homeland security, military organization, and war—a useful sample for observing how popular literature joined debates on national defense. As a free Project Gutenberg eBook, it is easy to search and cite, and fits well within the reading contexts of genre fiction history or military-social history. Read it as a historical-context text, attending to how the author builds a sense of crisis and portrays army organization and public response, rather than demanding modern plot sensibility. For readers studying early thriller fiction, propaganda writing, or public opinion history, this short book offers direct primary material and works well as a supplementary text for classroom discussion.

Who it's for

A good fit for

  • Readers interested in early invasion fiction and military speculative narrative
  • Readers studying public opinion, defense discourse, or popular literary history
  • Teachers needing free English e-texts as classroom supplements
  • History and literature enthusiasts who enjoy observing period anxieties in old texts

Not a good fit for

  • Fiction readers expecting modern pacing, complex characters, and twists
  • Readers seeking accurate military history knowledge or strategic analysis
  • Beginners unfamiliar with English usage from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century

Reading tips

  1. Start with the table of contents and chapter titles to grasp the overall structure of the crisis as the author arranged it.
  2. Note the author's wording when heightening threat, and observe how it stirs readers' emotions.
  3. Read alongside other invasion novels to compare how different authors handle the theme.
  4. For classroom use, select passages describing army organization or public response for close reading.

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
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59

FAQ

Is this book a real historical record or a work of fiction?
It is a fictional invasion narrative, not a historical record. Read it within the context of popular literature and period public opinion rather than using it as military history material.
How difficult is the English? Can non-native readers manage it?
The text is early twentieth-century English, with period features in syntax and vocabulary, but not overly difficult overall. Readers with intermediate English or above can finish it with a dictionary; sampling a chapter first will help you decide how much to invest.
As a free eBook, how is it best read?
Download the plain text or eBook format from the Project Gutenberg page; it suits keyword searching on a computer or e-reader. For research, keep a note-taking tool open to record page or chapter locations for easy citation.

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About the author

William Le Queux (1864–1927) was a British writer of popular fiction, with 74 of his works held in this collection. He is best known for invasion-scare and spy-adventure stories; The Invasion of 1910, which depicts a German invasion of Britain and the siege of London, drew considerable attention in its day, and The Great War in England in 1897 belongs to the same vein. His other works centre on mystery, intrigue and international espionage, such as The Zeppelin Destroyer, The Secrets of Potsdam, The Closed Book: Concerning the Secret of the Borgias and The Golden Face: A Great ‘Crook’ Romance, all marked by tight plotting and dense suspense. Le Queux often set fictional crises against real places to create a sense of urgency, and his work had some influence on the development of early spy fiction and thrillers. Public information is limited, so biographical details are not elaborated here.

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