The Ralstons cover

The Ralstons

Rating 3.4
Word count
858K words
Chapters
86

Tags

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 Ralstons by F. Marion CrawfordAuthor: Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion), 1854-1909,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Sep 13, 2015

Editor's review

The Ralstons is a novel by the late-19th-century American writer F. Marion Crawford, part of his series of family narratives set in New York high society. Crawford excels at rendering social manners and psychology in fine detail; this book continues his attention to marriage, property, and family ties, with steady plotting and dialogue rich in period flavor. As a public-domain ebook, the Project Gutenberg edition is easy to search and cite, making it a useful supplementary read for understanding 19th-century American social fiction. Readers may wish to compare it with Crawford's other works to appreciate his treatment of class mobility and moral dilemmas. Because the book was written long ago, its narrative pace differs markedly from modern fiction and requires corresponding patience.

Who it's for

A good fit for

  • Readers interested in 19th-century American literature and social manners
  • Literature students studying Crawford and the family novel
  • Readers who enjoy slow-paced classic narratives and are willing to engage with period language

Not a good fit for

  • Contemporary fiction readers who prefer fast plots and strong conflict
  • Beginners unaccustomed to 19th-century English expression and long sentences

Reading tips

  1. Begin with the introduction or a brief author biography to understand Crawford's background
  2. Proceed chapter by chapter, noting how dialogue reveals attitudes toward class and marriage
  3. Compare with other works in the series to observe the author's continuation of family themes

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
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82
  83. 83
  84. 84
  85. 85
  86. 86

FAQ

Is this a complete novel or an excerpt?
This is the complete ebook released by Project Gutenberg, containing the full text of The Ralstons in English. It is a public-domain resource, free to read and cite.
Can I read it without background in 19th-century American history?
Yes, but it helps to first learn about marriage and property customs in 19th-century New York high society to better understand character motives and plot conflicts.
What is a good way to read the electronic edition?
Read it on a computer or e-reader and use the search function to look up characters and keywords; for research, note chapter and page numbers for citation.

Comments

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About the author

F. Marion Crawford (Francis Marion Crawford, 1854–1909) was a notably prolific English-language novelist. The library holds 46 of his works, spanning a wide range of subjects: long novels set in Italy, such as Saracinesca, Greifenstein and Fair Margaret: A Portrait; the two-volume Ave Roma Immortalis, which portrays the history and monuments of Rome; the Arabian tale Khaled, A Tale of Arabia; and atmospheric ghost stories including The Upper Berth and Wandering Ghosts. These works show a writer skilled at evoking foreign and historical settings, with clear narrative structure and steady plotting, accomplished both in popular long fiction and in tales of the strange. His supernatural stories in particular have been favored by later anthologies and have had some influence on the English ghost-story tradition. Because public information is limited, biographical details are not elaborated here; the outline above rests on the works in the library's holdings.

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