The Lion and the Mouse: A Story of American Life

Klein, Charles, 1867-1915Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.5
Word count
471K words
Chapters
48

Tags

English Originals Social Fiction Social ObservationLove EntanglementsPower GameUrban RomanceComplex Humanity

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 Lion and the Mouse: A Story of American Life by Hornblow and KleinAuthor: Klein, Charles, 1867-1915,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Nov 29, 2004

Editor's review

Co-written by Charles Klein, this is an American-life story classified under American and Canadian literature, from a public-domain Project Gutenberg eBook. Sources indicate a playwright's background, so the narrative often shows a strong sense of scene and advances through dialogue, reading more like a popular story about American social life and human predicaments. Its value lies in showing what early twentieth-century American popular fiction looked like: plot-driven, clear character relationships, and moral issues woven into everyday conflict. For Chinese readers, it works as a light sample of the American popular literary tradition and as English-language extensive reading. Note that it is not a deep work of social analysis; expectations should rest on the story itself and the atmosphere of its time.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read one chapter first to feel the rhythm of dialogue and scene, then decide between close and extensive reading.
  2. Notice how dialogue drives conflict and reflects the author's playwright background.
  3. After finishing, summarize the main character relationships in a few sentences to check comprehension.
  4. Compare with other American popular short fiction to observe shared themes of the era.

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

FAQ

Is this book related to the fable of the same name? According to the sources, the book is subtitled A Story of American Life and belongs to American literature; it is not a retelling of Aesop's The Lion and the Mouse. Readers should approach it as American popular fiction, not as a fable.
What is Charles Klein's background? Sources show Charles Klein lived from 1867 to 1915; the book was co-written with Hornblow and classified under American and Canadian literature. His playwright background makes dialogue and scene progression stand out in the text.
Is the English original hard to read? This is a public-domain popular English novel, mostly narrative and dialogue, of moderate difficulty and suitable for extensive reading by readers with some English foundation. For period expressions or slang, infer from context rather than looking up every word.

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

Klein, Charles, 1867-1915 Author

Charles Klein (1867-1915) was an Anglo-American playwright active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Public information about him is limited, and many details of his life remain unclear. Five of his works are held in this collection, most of them novels adapted from stage plays, such as The Third Degree: A Narrative of Metropolitan Life, The Lion and the Mouse: A Story of American Life, John Marsh's Millions, The Music Master, and another version of The Lion and the Mouse. These works take urban life and everyday American circumstances as their subjects, with intricate plots and sharp dramatic conflict in a melodramatic vein. They reflect the contemporary vogue for adapting stage plays into popular reading matter and offer material for studying the interaction between popular literature and theater of the period.