The Rivers of Great Britain, Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial: Rivers of the

VariousProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 0.0
Word count
893K words
Chapters
90

Tags

English Originals Historical Geography Human GeographyHistorical ReappraisalRiver ChronicleNature ObservationIllustrated GuideGeography ScienceTravel EssaysRegional CultureFolk CustomsEnglish 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 Rivers of Great Britain, Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial: Rivers of theAuthor: Various,Language: English, Class: DA: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Great Britain, Ireland, Central Europe, Release Date: Dec 20, 2014

Editor's review

This book is a compilation of a Victorian-era illustrated survey of British rivers, written by multiple authors and combining description, history, and imagery. It weaves together geography, the changing fortunes of riverside towns, bridges and ferries, and stories of navigation, in the leisurely tone of nineteenth-century travel writing and natural history, while the illustrations offer a near-firsthand visual record. Its value for readers lies not in systematic argument but in the experience of "wandering along the river": one can sense the role of rivers such as the Thames and the Severn in old British life, and also use it as material for studying local history, environmental history, and travel literature. Because it was written long ago, some expressions bear the marks of their time and are best read alongside modern works. It suits slow, chapter-by-chapter reading in quiet hours, or as supplementary material for reading on British history and geography.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Start with the table of contents, choose a river, and read chapter by chapter alongside a map
  2. Look up old place names or archaic words as needed; no need to memorize them
  3. Treat the illustrations as independent material and cross-check them against the text
  4. Read one or two chapters at a time and jot down a few impressions of the river to aid memory

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
  87. 87
  88. 88
  89. 89
  90. 90

FAQ

Is this book an academic monograph or a popular work? It is closer to a Victorian compilation of illustrated travel writing, with multiple authors covering different rivers and combining description, history, and visual record. The narrative is leisurely and wide-ranging, but it is not a systematic academic monograph in the modern sense; cite it alongside contemporary research.
Is the English original hard to read, and what background is needed? The language is generally plain, but because the book is old, it contains old-fashioned syntax and place names and archaic words. University-level English reading ability is enough to read it through; look up unfamiliar passages in a dictionary or on a map rather than struggling over every word.
Are there many illustrations, and what are they for? As a "Pictorial" work, illustrations are an important part; they help build an intuitive impression of the riverside scenery. They are also visual material for studying old landscapes and cartographic styles, and are worth browsing separately.

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About the author

Various Author

Various is not a real person but a collective attribution used in book cataloging and databases for works with multiple authors, commonly applied to anthologies, compilations, or publications with too many contributors to list individually. On this Chinese book site, this attribution covers as many as 3,387 titles, spanning encyclopedic entries, historical documents, and trial records. Representative works include several volumes of the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the record of the trial of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Available public information is limited: nationality, birth and death dates, and common categories are not clearly recorded, making it difficult to summarize a unified writing style or personal biography. Readers should understand it as a cataloging convention rather than a single author.