The River's Children: An Idyl of the Mississippi

Stuart, Ruth McEnery, 1856-1917Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
148K words
Chapters
15

Tags

English Originals Family BondsSlow ReadingGrowing UpHeartwarming NarrativeFolk Customs

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 River's Children: An Idyl of the Mississippi by Ruth McEnery StuartAuthor: Stuart, Ruth McEnery, 1856-1917,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Nov 23, 2010

Editor's review

This is an English-language work by Ruth McEnery Stuart set along the Mississippi River, released as a public-domain eBook by Project Gutenberg. Stuart (1856–1917) was an American writer whose work often drew on Southern life and local color. The word "Idyl" in the title signals a pastoral, idyllic quality: the book centers on the everyday lives of children by the river, with language rich in local flavor and dialogue marked by colloquial speech, creating a gentle, lyrical atmosphere. Its value lies not in dramatic plotting but in its delicate rendering of life along the Mississippi and a child's perspective, making it suitable for readers interested in American Southern literature and regional writing. As English reading material, its colloquial dialogue and local expressions are both a distinctive feature and a challenge; readers should slow down to appreciate the lived texture of the language. Being a public-domain eBook, it is easy to access at any time and serves as an accessible introduction to the late nineteenth-century American Southern narrative tradition, though it requires patience with a slow-paced, atmospheric text.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Learn about the work's period and regional background before starting to better grasp its atmosphere.
  2. For colloquial dialogue, read for overall meaning first rather than checking every dialect expression.
  3. Read in scene-based sections and notice how the author uses detail to evoke the texture of riverside life.
  4. After reading, compare with other works of American Southern literature to see similarities and differences in regional writing.

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

FAQ

Is the narrative pace fast? The overall pace is rather slow, in an atmospheric, pastoral style that focuses on vignettes of children's lives along the Mississippi and the local setting rather than driving strong plot conflict. It suits readers willing to slow down and savor the texture of language and scene; those who prefer fast-paced stories may find it slow.
Is the English difficult? The book features noticeable colloquial dialogue and local expressions whose style is distant from contemporary standard English, posing a challenge for non-native readers. Try reading a page or two first to gauge the difficulty, focus on overall meaning rather than checking every dialect usage, and return to examine expressive features after building up more reading.
Why does the word "Idyl" appear in the title? "Idyl" refers to a pastoral short work, suggesting that the book does not rely on intense plot but instead depicts tranquil, simple scenes of life and emotional atmosphere. Understanding this genre hint helps readers adjust expectations and focus on scene, language, and the child's perspective rather than looking for dramatic turns.

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About the author

Stuart, Ruth McEnery, 1856-1917 Author

Ruth McEnery Stuart (1856–1917) was an American writer; some details of her life and career are limited in publicly available sources and await further verification. Six of her works are held in this collection, most of them drawing on the rural life of the American South, especially the Mississippi River region. Her representative work, The River's Children: An Idyl of the Mississippi, portrays riverside childhood in a warm tone, while Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches, Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales, and Sonny, a Christmas Guest focus on festivals, family, and small-town human nature with humor and sentiment. She also wrote for children, including Gobolinks; or, Shadow Pictures for Young and Old and Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles, showing an interest in childhood play and folk wisdom. Her style is intimate and natural, and she is known for depicting characters through dialect and everyday scenes, earning her a place in the local-color literature of the American South.