The Life and Letters of the Rev. George Mortimer, M.A.

Armstrong, JohnProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.0
Word count
567K words
Chapters
57

Tags

English Originals General BiographyReligion Portrait GalleryHumanistic CarePatriotismSpiritual PracticeDaily ReflectionsMoral CultivationDocumentary Narrative19th Century

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 Life and Letters of the Rev. George Mortimer, M.A. by John ArmstrongAuthor: Armstrong, John,Language: English, Class: BV: Philosophy, Psychology, Religion: Christianity: Practical theology, Worship, Release Date: Oct 14, 2018

Editor's review

This is a biography and letter collection chronicling the life of the Reverend George Mortimer, compiled by John Armstrong. Classified under Christian practical theology and worship-related literature, it unfolds through a biographical narrative combined with selected letters, allowing the subject's spiritual character to be corroborated by his own words and by friends' accounts. The value of such a work lies not in drama but in presenting a clergyman's daily ministry, personal relationships, and inner concerns; the letters in particular preserve tone and warmth and are primary material for understanding the religious life and personal feelings of the time. For readers studying religious biography, the epistolary genre, or the history of church life, it offers a text for close reading; for general readers, it requires some background interest and patience. When reading, treat the letters as the core and the biographical narrative as the connecting frame, and note how the editor selects and arranges material, thereby appreciating the choices made in biographical writing.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read selected letters first, then return to the biographical narrative to see how the two complement each other.
  2. Note the editor's choices and commentary, and consider how biography shapes the subject's image.
  3. Read alongside background material on church history to help understand the people and context.
  4. After reading, note the letter that impressed you most and write a brief reflection against your own experience.

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
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FAQ

Is this a complete autobiography or compiled by someone else? It is a biography and letter collection compiled by someone else: the editor John Armstrong combines a narrative of the Reverend George Mortimer's life with selected letters. The book thus contains both the editor's biographical account and the subject's own writings; the two interweave to form the whole, and readers should distinguish the narrator's voice from the subject's.
Can I read it without knowing Christian background? You can read it, but depth of understanding will be affected. The book involves terminology and scenes of ministry, worship, and church life; without basic background, some content may feel remote. It is advisable to first learn about the daily operation of nineteenth-century Christian churches and the duties of clergy before entering the text, which will make the human feeling and concerns in the letters easier to appreciate.
What place do the letters have in the book? The letters are an important component and a feature distinguishing the book from ordinary biography. Through them the editor lets the subject present his thoughts and feelings in the first person, supplementing details and tones that biographical narrative cannot convey. Treating the letters as core material allows a more direct sense of the subject's spiritual character and the atmosphere of the time.

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About the author

Armstrong, John Author

John Armstrong is the author of The Life and Letters of the Rev. George Mortimer, M.A. Public information about him is limited: his nationality, dates of birth and death, education, and career are not clearly recorded, and only one of his works is held in the collection. Judging from this single work, he was engaged in writing biography and editing correspondence, focusing on the life of a clergyman and drawing on the subject's letters as narrative material. Writing of this kind generally emphasizes the arrangement of historical sources and the direct presentation of the subject's words and deeds, tending toward documentary record rather than fiction or argument. Although information about Armstrong himself is scarce, the book offers a useful source for the study of George Mortimer and reflects the common nineteenth-century biographical practice of relying on letters and empirical evidence.