The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction

VariousProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
83K words
Chapters
9

Tags

Literature English Originals Human GeographyLight ReadingIllustrated GuideMagazine SelectionMiscellanyLife EssaysPopular NarrativeEclectic ReadingSocial ObservationVictorian 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: Jun 1, 2004

Editor's review

This collection of nineteenth-century English periodical pieces, digitized as a free eBook by Project Gutenberg, is valuable not for systematic argument but for the cross-section of periodical reading tastes and knowledge dissemination it offers: literary essays, anecdotes, practical instruction and popular science sit side by side in a brisk, short-form style suited to fragmentary browsing. As a public-domain text, it provides directly accessible primary material for the study of nineteenth-century English periodical culture, popular reading tastes and early eBook formats. There is no need to read it straight through; it works best as a magazine-style volume to open and set down at will. Readers unfamiliar with the language of old English periodicals might begin with short essays or anecdotes to absorb the feel and atmosphere of the age, then move on to longer reviews and instructional pieces.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Pick short pieces at random from the table of contents, reading two or three at a time to keep a magazine-like rhythm.
  2. Keep a notebook for unfamiliar words and period background, then look them up together afterward.
  3. Read alongside other English periodicals of the same period to compare style and subject matter.
  4. Read a single piece on the commute or before bed; avoid long continuous sessions.

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

FAQ

Is this a complete monograph or a collection of articles? The material indicates it is a collection of periodical pieces—literary, entertaining and instructional articles—rather than a systematic monograph by a single author, so it suits selective reading by piece rather than linear reading.
Can someone with only basic English read this book? It is worth trying, but requires some patience with English. Start with short anecdotes and essays, using a dictionary and background notes; for study purposes, begin with shorter pieces with simpler sentence structures.
How does the electronic edition differ from reading a paper copy? This is a free eBook from Project Gutenberg, easy to search, copy and carry, but it lacks the physical feel of a paper book; a reading app that supports notes and word lookup helps make up for the limited typographic information of the old periodical layout.

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.