The Portygee

Lincoln, Joseph Crosby, 1870-1944Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.9

Word count: 669K words
Chapters: 67

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 Portygee by Joseph Crosby LincolnAuthor: Lincoln, Joseph Crosby, 1870-1944,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: May 30, 2006

Editor's review

The Portygee is a novel by the American writer Joseph Crosby Lincoln, belonging to the tradition of New England regional literature. Lincoln excelled at depicting seaside small-town life around Cape Cod; his characters are mostly fishermen, sailors and townspeople, and his language is humorous and rich in dialect. The book centers on a young protagonist of Portuguese descent, and through his origins and fortunes presents the warmth and coldness of small-town society, its prejudice and its acceptance. As a public-domain eBook, its greatest value lies in preserving the vivid colloquial speech and everyday local color of early twentieth-century American regional fiction. It suits readers who want to understand American regional literature, study dialect writing, or simply enjoy a slow-paced story of human relationships. Readers should not look for a strong plot but should pay attention to characterization through dialogue and to local color. The English original is freely available through Project Gutenberg.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who enjoy American regional fiction and seaside small-town settings
Those interested in early twentieth-century American everyday life and dialect writing
Readers who want low-cost access to English-language literature through public-domain eBooks
Enthusiasts of New England regional literature and immigration themes

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer strong plots and fast-paced suspense or action
Beginners with limited English reading ability who are unused to dialect spelling
Readers seeking systematic historical background or social analysis

Reading tips

Read a chapter or two first to get the rhythm of the dialect dialogue, then decide whether to read the whole book.
Don't look up every dialect spelling; grasp the tone and the character's personality instead.
Read alongside background material on Cape Cod geography and New England immigration history.
Keep notes on character relationships to help keep track of the many townspeople.

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 in Chinese or English?

This is the English public-domain eBook released by Project Gutenberg; the original is in English, and no official Chinese translation is included. Chinese readers need some English reading ability, or a dictionary or translation tool for support.

What does Portygee in the title mean?

Portygee is a dialect variant of the word for a Portuguese person, often colloquial in tone. The book uses it to mark the protagonist's ethnic background and from there to explore small-town attitudes and prejudice toward outsiders.

Do I need to read it in order from beginning to end?

The novel has a continuous plot line, so reading chapter by chapter is recommended for understanding character relationships and cause and effect. If you only want a feel for the style, you can start with dialogue-heavy chapters, but you may miss the groundwork.

Is this book suitable for learning English?

It can serve as extensive reading material for intermediate to advanced English readers, offering exposure to natural colloquial and dialect expressions. But because dialect spellings are frequent, it is not suitable as an introductory textbook for standard English grammar or vocabulary.

Comments

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About the author

Lincoln, Joseph Crosby, 1870-1944 Author

Joseph Crosby Lincoln (1870–1944) was an American author best known for his novels and short stories about life in the small coastal towns of New England. Public information about him is limited, so the details of his life are difficult to set out; yet the nineteen works held in this collection show that he wrote consistently about fishermen, sea captains and ordinary residents around Cape Cod, endowing his characters with strong local accents and a lively sense of humor. His representative works include Galusha the Magnificent, Kent Knowles: Quahaug, Cap'n Warren's Wards and Cape Cod Stories, titles that themselves convey a flavor of the sea and of village life. His easygoing, warm-hearted style, built on everyday incidents and conversation, places him in the tradition of early twentieth-century American regional fiction.