The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction

VariousProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
73K words
Chapters
8

Tags

Literature English Originals Knowledge MiscellanySocial ObservationLight ReadingMagazine SelectionMiscellanyLife EssaysFun ScienceAccessible ReadingCultural 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: Jun 1, 2004

Editor's review

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction is a compilation of a nineteenth-century British general-interest miscellany, classed as a periodical. Its title states its purpose: a blend of literature, amusement, and instruction, combining stories, anecdotes, popular science, and practical knowledge—a mass-market reading product aimed at ordinary readers of the day. As a public-domain electronic text prepared by Project Gutenberg, its value today is mainly historical: readers can see how nineteenth-century popular publishing organized its contents, balanced entertainment with edification, and which topics engaged the curiosity of ordinary readers. It is not designed for continuous reading but is more like a bound volume of period clippings to dip into. For those studying nineteenth-century publishing history, periodical culture, or British popular reading habits, it is a directly citable primary source; for general readers, it is light reading that opens a window onto the everyday topics of the era.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. No need to read straight through; skip among pieces by column or title according to interest.
  2. Note recurring topics as you read to sketch the landscape of popular knowledge of the time.
  3. Use it as a corpus: excerpt typical sentence patterns and vocabulary for studying nineteenth-century English.
  4. For research, first confirm the source and version of specific pieces before citing.

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 a complete book or a periodical compilation? It is classed as a periodical (Periodicals), a compilation of a nineteenth-century general-interest miscellany containing literary, amusing, and instructive short pieces rather than a complete work by a single author. The reading experience is thus closer to browsing an old magazine than reading a long work.
What do the three keywords in the title refer to? Literature refers to literary works and stories, Amusement to entertaining anecdotes and light content, and Instruction to informative, edifying popular science and practical information. Placed side by side, they embody the nineteenth-century popular periodical's editorial approach of combining entertainment with education, and readers can use them to gauge the nature of each piece.
Is this book suitable for historical research? It can be used as a primary source, especially for studying nineteenth-century popular publishing, periodical column design, and ordinary readers' tastes. But it is a public-domain electronic text lacking modern scholarly annotation; before citing, verify the specific piece, original source, and version information, and consult relevant historical scholarship for background.
Is the original English text difficult to read? The text is nineteenth-century English; some pieces have long sentences and diction distant from contemporary English, but it was written for a general readership rather than in an academic style. Readers with university-level English can read it through; for unfamiliar words or passages with unclear period background, looking them up or skimming does not hinder overall understanding.

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.