The Lost City

Badger, Jos. E. (Joseph Edward), 1848-1909Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.5

Word count: 335K words
Chapters: 34

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 Lost City by Jos. E. BadgerAuthor: Badger, Jos. E. (Joseph Edward), 1848-1909,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Jan 1, 1997

Editor's review

The Lost City is a young-adult adventure novel by the nineteenth-century American author Joseph Edward Badger, a public-domain work of juvenile literature available through Project Gutenberg. The story is built around the search for a mysterious ancient city and has the typical appeal of old-fashioned adventure narrative: unknown perils along the journey, strange ruins, and a succession of dangers supply the main tension, while the language is plain and the chapters move briskly, making it a useful sample of early English-language adventure fiction for young readers. Its value lies not in deep literary experimentation but in showing how popular reading matter of that era drew young readers with exotic imaginings and adventure plots. For anyone studying the history of children's literature, the popular novel as a genre, or English reading practice, it is an easily accessible and comfortably short primary text. Readers may wish to note its period markers and narrative conventions, treating it as a living specimen of genre fiction rather than a work aiming at modern depth.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who want to understand the nineteenth-century English-language adventure novel for young readers
Learners who need a moderately long public-domain English text for extensive reading practice
Students and enthusiasts studying early children's literature and popular fiction
Readers who enjoy ruin-exploration themes and can accept an old-fashioned narrative pace

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking modern literary depth and complex character psychology
Readers sensitive to old-fashioned adventure formulas and period prejudices
Nonfiction readers hoping for rigorous history or archaeology

Reading tips

Skim the table of contents first to grasp the main line of exploration, then proceed chapter by chapter without looking up every word.
Treat it as a specimen of genre fiction and note the recurring adventure tropes as you read.
For extensive reading in English, focus on following the plot; skip unfamiliar words at first and review them after finishing a chapter.
After reading, compare it with other adventure novels for young readers of the same period to see how narrative conventions differ.

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

What age group is this book suitable for?

Sources place it in the juvenile literature category, and its language and plot difficulty are roughly suited to adolescents and general adult readers with basic English reading ability. However, the book bears the period markers of nineteenth-century popular adventure fiction, so parents or teachers may wish to provide a little background for younger readers, helping them distinguish literary imagination from real history and archaeology.

Is the lost city in the story based on a real place?

The available materials do not indicate that the story draws on a specific real site; it is closer to the exotic-ruin imaginings common to adventure fiction for young readers of that era. It should not be read as history or archaeology, but as adventure narrative within popular genre fiction, appreciated for its plotting and period flavor.

How difficult is the English, and is it good for reading practice?

As a nineteenth-century adventure novel for young readers, its sentence structure is relatively plain and the plot moves quickly, making it suitable for extensive reading in English. Old-fashioned vocabulary and period expressions may cause minor difficulty; it is best to read a whole chapter at a time, follow the main plot first, avoid looking up every new word, and review key passages afterward.

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About the author

Badger, Jos. E. (Joseph Edward), 1848-1909 Author · 1848–1909

Jos. E. Badger (full name Joseph Edward Badger, 1848–1909) was an American writer of popular literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, about whom public information is very limited. Only one of his works is currently held in this collection, The Lost City. Judging from its title and period, such works generally belong to the tradition of adventure and romance fiction, often dealing with unknown regions, lost civilizations, or distant expeditions, catering to contemporary readers' interest in exotic imagination and thrilling plots. Badger's style may therefore be broadly placed within a plot-driven, imaginative, mass-oriented storytelling tradition. Because reliable records of his life, education, and other works are lacking, this introduction makes no conjecture and merely outlines his identity and creative orientation on the basis of the existing catalogue entry and title, for readers' reference.