The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction

VariousProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.4
Word count
71K words
Chapters
8

Tags

Literature English Originals Everyday LifeSocial ObservationHumanistic CareSlow ReadingLight ReadingMagazine SelectionEssays and SketchesPopular ExplanationCultural 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

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction is a miscellany devoted to literature, amusement, and instruction, gathering short pieces, stories, and related articles by multiple authors. Unlike a collection by a single author, it emphasizes the juxtaposition of subjects and reading functions: some pieces entertain, others provoke thought. Through this mix of authors, narrative modes, and tastes, the book reflects the character of early popular periodicals or digest-style reading, and suits readers who want to encounter many kinds of writing at once. The electronic edition is easy to browse piece by piece and to move between classic narrative, popular literary taste, and general reading material. Since the source provides no detailed table of contents, readers may treat it as an open-ended cultural reading archive rich in themes.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Browse the contents first and group pieces into stories, essays, and instructive material
  2. Compare how different authors handle everyday subjects and entertaining endings
  3. Read similar pieces in sequence to observe differences in structure and tone
  4. Mark passages that are both entertaining and thought-provoking as you read

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

How is this book different from a single-author collection? It is made up of pieces by many authors covering literature, amusement, instruction, and more. The focus is not one author but the contrast between different styles and tastes.
How should reading be arranged? You can skim the contents first, then group pieces by subject or reading function. Reading one piece at a time keeps things light, while comparing similar pieces in sequence makes stylistic differences clearer.
What is the reading value of this book? It offers a miscellaneous reading experience, with both entertaining stories and instructive writing, and is suited to observing how popular reading balances amusement and education.

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.