The Regent

Bennett, Arnold, 1867-1931Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.7

Word count: 486K words
Chapters: 49

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 Regent by Arnold BennettAuthor: Bennett, Arnold, 1867-1931,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jun 1, 2004

Editor's review

The Regent is an English novel by Arnold Bennett, classified under English literature and released free by Project Gutenberg. Bennett was a major early twentieth-century British novelist, known for his detailed depiction of everyday life and steady narrative, and his works often focus on ordinary people's circumstances in urban and commercial society. The Regent continues his attention to character and social manners, with a leisurely narrative and vivid dialogue, making it one of the accessible entry texts for understanding Edwardian British fiction. The Gutenberg edition has the advantages of a complete text, easy access, and free searchability on electronic devices; its drawback is the lack of modern annotations and introductions, so the period background, place names, and social customs mentioned in the book must be looked up by the reader. Overall, this is a work to read slowly and calmly rather than for fast-paced plot; it is better treated as a window onto a slice of life from an era.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Literary readers interested in Edwardian British fiction and social life
Readers who want to read Bennett systematically and fill out their map of English literature
Learners with good English reading ability willing to read an unannotated original
Teachers who need public-domain English novels for book-club discussion or course extensive reading

Not a good fit for

Genre-fiction readers expecting strong plots and fast pacing
Beginners with weak English who rely on sentence-by-sentence annotations
Readers completely unfamiliar with early twentieth-century British society who are unwilling to look things up

Reading tips

Read a chapter or two first to feel the narrative pace, then decide whether to read straight through or select key chapters.
Keep notes on character relationships while reading; Bennett's works have many characters, and sorting them out makes it easier to get into.
Read alongside background material on Edwardian British society to understand the logic of the characters' behavior.
After finishing, read a Bennett short story or essay for comparison, contrasting his long and short forms.

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

Can I understand this novel without annotations?

The text itself is clearly narrated and standard in language, so the basic plot is understandable. The main difficulties are period background, place names, and social customs; look up what you don't understand as needed rather than relying on annotations page by page.

Is this book suitable for English learners?

It suits learners who already have some experience reading originals. Bennett's sentence structures are complete and his wording refined, good for building written expression, but for beginners the length and background threshold are on the high side; starting with a simplified version or a parallel translation is advisable.

What is the difference between the Gutenberg edition and a paper book?

Project Gutenberg provides a free public-domain electronic text containing the work's main text, usually without the introduction, annotations, and appendices of a modern publisher's edition. The advantage is easy access and full-text search; the drawback is the lack of auxiliary reading material.

Comments

Find this book

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

Bennett, Arnold, 1867-1931 Author

Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) was an English novelist, essayist and playwright. Publicly available information is limited, so his early life and education cannot be described in detail, but his work is clearly recognisable. He often set his writing in the five pottery towns of Staffordshire, his home region, portraying the daily livelihoods and emotional ups and downs of ordinary people in a meticulous, restrained style, and revealing character and circumstance through everyday detail. The collection here holds 45 of his works, including The Old Wives' Tale, Riceyman Steps, Clayhanger and several Five Towns story collections, as well as essays such as The Author's Craft and How to Live on 24 Hours a Day. His writing thus spans fiction and essays on life and the craft of writing, drawing its material from ordinary life with a plain style and close observation.