The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction

VariousProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.1
Word count
76K words
Chapters
8

Tags

English Originals Literature Historical ReappraisalSocial ObservationHumanistic CareMagazine SelectionPopular NarrativeCultural ChangeVictorian Era

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 Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction by VariousAuthor: Various,Language: English, Class: AP: General Works: Periodicals, Release Date: Mar 1, 2004

Editor's review

This is a digital edition of the nineteenth-century English periodical The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, released free of charge by Project Gutenberg. Periodicals of this kind, dedicated equally to literature, amusement, and instruction, typically offered essays, short stories, anecdotes, historical sketches, and practical knowledge, making them primary sources for understanding popular reading tastes and popular culture in nineteenth-century Britain. Their value lies not in systematic scholarly argument but in presenting the world as ordinary readers of the age encountered it: how knowledge was popularized and how taste was shaped. For readers studying the history of periodicals, Victorian publishing culture, or the history of English-language reading, it is a usable primary text; for general readers, it serves as casual browsing material, to be dipped into at random and to convey the rhythm and tone of the old periodical. Note that it is an English-language original and a historical text, and some of its ideas and expressions carry the limitations of their time; it should be read with a historicizing perspective.

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Reading tips

  1. Begin by browsing the contents and sections, then pick a short piece or anecdote that interests you; there is no need to read straight through.
  2. Treat the periodical as a slice of its era: note recurring subjects and tones as you read to form an overall impression.
  3. Mark unfamiliar allusions or historical names and look them up afterward rather than interrupting your reading constantly.
  4. If using it for research, excerpt by section and compare it with other periodicals of the same period.

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

FAQ

Is this book a complete run of the periodical or a single issue? It is an electronic text released by Project Gutenberg; the exact coverage should be determined from that edition's table of contents and main text. Different electronic editions may organize their contents differently, so check the contents note at the beginning of the file before judging its scope.
Can someone with average English read it? The text is nineteenth-century English, with period features in syntax and vocabulary and many references to people, places, and allusions of the time. A university-level reading ability in English is enough to attempt it, but a dictionary and background materials may be needed; for lighter reading, start with the short anecdotal pieces.
Is it suitable for academic citation? It can be used as primary material for nineteenth-century periodical texts, but citations should verify the specific piece, page, or location in the electronic edition, and note that transcription errors may exist. Judgments about historical context are best checked against authoritative editions or relevant scholarship.
What background knowledge is helpful for reading? Some familiarity with nineteenth-century British society and culture, publishing, and the popular reading market helps but is not essential. More useful preparation is familiarity with the usual section formats of periodicals of the time and a readiness to look up people, events, and allusions.

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

Various Author

Various is not a real person but a collective attribution used in book cataloging and databases for works with multiple authors, commonly applied to anthologies, compilations, or publications with too many contributors to list individually. On this Chinese book site, this attribution covers as many as 3,387 titles, spanning encyclopedic entries, historical documents, and trial records. Representative works include several volumes of the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the record of the trial of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Available public information is limited: nationality, birth and death dates, and common categories are not clearly recorded, making it difficult to summarize a unified writing style or personal biography. Readers should understand it as a cataloging convention rather than a single author.