The Nest Egg

William Wymark JacobsProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.1

Word count: 23K words
Chapters: 3

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 Nest Egg by W. W. JacobsAuthor: Jacobs, W. W. (William Wymark), 1863-1943,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Feb 1, 2004

Editor's review

W. W. Jacobs was a master of the English short story, known above all for his humor and twists. The Nest Egg continues in his light, brisk style, centering on an ordinary person's simple wish to protect his savings; the plot is tight, the dialogue lively, and the twist often arrives when least expected. Its themes of thrift, family ties, and the small calculations of human nature still draw a smile from readers today. Brief enough to finish on a commute or during a lunch break, it also serves as a model for writing short fiction in English, showing how everyday details can build suspense. For readers who enjoy British humor and short-form storytelling, it is an easy, pleasurable read; for those studying late nineteenth-century English everyday life, it offers a glimpse of the era.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who enjoy British humor and short stories with a twist
Office workers who want to read short English fiction in spare moments
Students learning short-story structure and dialogue in English
Readers interested in late nineteenth-century English everyday life

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer long narratives and intricate world-building
Readers looking for serious social critique or weighty historical fiction
Beginners with weak English who need sentence-by-sentence annotation

Reading tips

Read through once for the plot, then revisit key dialogue to see where the twist was planted.
Read one section a day on your commute or lunch break to keep the suspense alive.
After finishing, try retelling the story in two or three sentences to check whether you grasped the central conflict.
Read alongside a Chinese translation and compare how the humorous tone is handled in translation.

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

Is this book a novel or a short story?

It is a short story by Jacobs, not long, with a typical short-story structure. It can be read in one sitting or over two or three, with no long-term commitment.

Can I read it without having read other works by Jacobs?

Yes. His short stories stand alone, with characters and plots that do not depend on earlier works. You can read it directly without difficulty; it works well as an introduction to his comic style.

How difficult is the English?

The original is late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century English. The sentences are not complex, but there are some period expressions and colloquialisms. Readers with intermediate English can manage with a dictionary.

Comments

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About the author

William Wymark Jacobs Author · British · 1863–1943

William Wymark Jacobs (1863–1943) was a British short-story writer, born in London in 1863 and died there in 1943. In his early years he lived around the Thames docks and was familiar with the lives of sailors and dockworkers, which led him to write a great many humorous sea stories, often in a light and witty tone. His best-known work, The Monkey's Paw, is a classic horror short story included in The Lady of the Barge (1902); noted for its tight suspense and sudden twists, it is still widely anthologized in horror collections. The library holds 109 of his works, including The Lady of the Barge and Others, Ship's Company, A Tiger's Skin, Captains All, and Night Watches; his common category is inspirational growth. Public information is limited and details of his life are largely unavailable, yet his fiction is distinctive in subject, blending humor with horror, and has had a lasting influence on later short-story writing.