The Sealed Message
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Intermediate English readers who want to practice reading original English fiction and prefer plot-driven novels
- Readers interested in popular suspense fiction from the late Victorian to Edwardian era
- Mystery fans who enjoy stories driven by a central mystery involving letters and secrets
- People who want free public-domain e-books to read in fragmented time
Not a good fit for
- Readers with weak English who need Chinese notes or a translation to assist them
- Readers who prefer modern narrative pacing and have limited patience for old-fashioned prose
- Researchers who need scholarly introductions, textual criticism, or detailed background notes
Reading tips
- First skim the chapter titles and opening to grasp the central mystery triggered by the letter before reading on
- When encountering unfamiliar words, first guess from context and look them up after finishing the chapter, to avoid frequent interruption
- Keep a note of character relationships, jotting down characters and clues as they appear, to help clarify the mystery
- Read one or two chapters at a fixed time each day, during commutes or before bed, to maintain the continuity of the plot
About the publisher
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
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FAQ
What English level is this book roughly suitable for?
What are the features of the Project Gutenberg e-book?
Do I need to know about the author Hume before reading?
Is it suitable as an introductory book for reading original English fiction?
Comments
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About the author
Fergus Hume (1859–1932) was a British novelist. Born in England, he moved with his family to New Zealand as a child, studied at the University of Otago and qualified as a lawyer. In 1885 he went to Melbourne, and the following year he published The Mystery of a Hansom Cab at his own expense, achieving instant fame; the book is regarded as a bestselling classic in the history of detective fiction. In 1888 Hume returned to England to settle, and thereafter devoted himself to detective and suspense fiction, producing more than a hundred works in his lifetime, of which 66 are held in this collection, including The Silent House, The Gentleman Who Vanished and The Spider. He died in Essex in 1932.
