The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland

Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.5
Word count
381K words
Chapters
39

Tags

English Originals Modern Poetry Literary GeographyRegional PoetPoet BiographiesPoets' GalleryRegional PoetryAnthology CompilationLocal Literary HeritageMaryland Scenery

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 Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland by George JohnstonAuthor: ,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: May 1, 2004

Editor's review

This compilation of local literary documents, edited by George Johnston and made available as a free electronic edition by Project Gutenberg, is a collection of poets and poetry from Cecil County, Maryland. Its core value lies not in the classic status of any single poem, but in preserving, county by county, the works and biographical traces of local poets, offering primary material for the study of American regional literature, community cultural memory, and the ecology of nineteenth-century American poetry. Readers can see the tastes of local newspaper poets and small-town literary circles, and how localness shaped poetic themes and language—a perspective often overlooked in mainstream literary history. As a public-domain e-book, it is easy to search and cite, and suits reference reading rather than cover-to-cover reading. Because it was compiled long ago, its selection criteria and critical tone bear the marks of their time; readers should maintain a documentary critical awareness and treat it as historical material rather than an authoritative anthology.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read the editor's preface and poet biographies first to build a map of county literature, then select poems to read.
  2. Proceed poet by poet, noting themes and diction features for each to facilitate cross-comparison.
  3. Read the poems against the background of nineteenth-century American local newspaper culture to understand their production context.
  4. There is no need to read the whole book; search for specific poets or themes according to your research question, then read the relevant pieces closely.

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
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39

FAQ

Does this book collect famous works by major authors? No. It is a compilation of works by local poets of Cecil County; its value lies in its local and documentary nature, not in including well-known classics. It is suitable as historical material for local literary study.
The English is difficult—can I read it directly? The text is nineteenth-century English poetry, with some archaic diction and syntax. It is advisable to read the prose sections, such as poet biographies, first to familiarize yourself with the context, then read poem by poem with a dictionary, or discuss with other readers.
Is the electronic edition suitable for academic citation? The Project Gutenberg edition is a public-domain electronic text suitable for reading and research, but when citing, note the version information and the lack of page numbers; key quotations are best checked against other editions or the original publication.

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

Project Gutenberg Author

Project Gutenberg is not a single author but a nonprofit digital library founded by Michael Hart in 1971 and one of the world's earliest free ebook platforms. It relies on volunteers to digitize, proofread, and freely distribute public-domain works and is now operated by the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Its collection contains 2,692 works, mainly religious texts, epics, and story collections, including the King James Bible and the Douay-Rheims volumes, the epic Mahabharata, a literal translation of the Arabian Nights, and Danish editions of the Old and New Testaments. Public information is limited, and its nature is closer to a public-interest compiling and dissemination body; these texts are open to the public, easy to consult and circulate, and have had a profound influence on the spread of ebooks and the preservation of public-domain resources.