The Secret Service Submarine: A Story of the Present War

Thorne, Guy, 1875-1923Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.7

Word count: 248K words
Chapters: 25

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 Secret Service Submarine: A Story of the Present War by Guy Thorne. Author: Thorne, Guy, 1875-1923. Language: English. Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature. Release Date: Aug 25, 2012

Editor's review

This novel by the English writer Guy Thorne is set during the First World War and revolves around a secret submarine and wartime espionage. A popular thriller published a century ago, it preserves the period's imagination of naval warfare, spies and imperial crisis; the plot moves directly and the suspense is densely packed, making it suitable for readers interested in early military thrillers. Project Gutenberg's electronic edition makes this hard-to-find old work readable again; the text is in English and moderate in length. Read it as a literary-historical document: you can enjoy an adventure story and observe how wartime British popular fiction shaped images of friend and foe and conveyed tension to the masses. It does not aim for deep characterization and is better as leisure reading or supplementary material for genre-fiction studies than as a serious historical reference.

Who it's for

A good fit for

English-language readers who enjoy early military thrillers and spy fiction
Enthusiasts studying British popular literature of the First World War
Those who need a light English original for reading practice
Readers interested in submarines and naval warfare

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking rigorous factual material on First World War military history
Readers who prefer complex psychology and literary depth
Those whose English reading ability is not yet sufficient for a full-length original

Reading tips

Read the opening chapters first to grasp the character relationships and the main mission, then continue straight through.
Skim naval and military terminology rather than checking every word, so as not to break the rhythm.
Read alongside background material on the First World War to understand the period imagination and stance in the novel.
As a specimen of genre fiction, note after reading how suspense is set up and how the enemy is portrayed.

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

Is this the original English edition, and how difficult is it to read?

This is the original English e-book released by Project Gutenberg, in the popular English of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sentence structures are not complex, but some naval and military vocabulary appears. Readers with college-level English can finish it smoothly; beginners may need a dictionary.

Is the war background in the novel real?

The novel builds a fictional story against the war of the author's own time; it is a popular thriller, not a documentary work. Its characters and submarine operations are literary inventions and cannot be cited as historical fact; for real military history, consult specialized works.

Is it suitable for historical research?

It is better suited as material for studying popular literature and wartime public mentality than as evidence of military history. Readers can observe how British popular reading matter of the time narrated spies, submarines and enemy images, but specific operations and details should be verified against formal historical sources.

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

Thorne, Guy, 1875-1923 Author

Guy Thorne (1875–1923) was an English novelist active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Public information about his life is limited, and many biographical details remain unclear. Seventeen of his works are held in the collection, spanning suspense, mystery, thriller, and inspirational coming-of-age fiction. His representative novel When It Was Dark: The Story of a Great Conspiracy builds its mystery around religious and social crisis, while The City in the Clouds, House of Torment, The Soul Stealer, The Angel, A Butterfly on the Wheel, Chance in Chains: A Story of Monte Carlo, and The Air Pirate often involve mysterious events, criminal conspiracies, and adventure. His writing emphasizes suspense and atmosphere, with tightly plotted narratives in which characters face moral and fatal tests; some works also carry an inspirational, growth-oriented tone, offering a glimpse of the popular fiction tastes of his time.