The Tobacco Tiller: A Tale of the Kentucky Tobacco Fields

Hackley, Sarah BellProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.8
Word count
322K words
Chapters
33

Tags

English Originals Social Fiction Nature ObservationFate and FortuneFamily BondsGrowing UpDaily ReflectionsLife WisdomHeartwarming NarrativeFemale Perspective

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 Tobacco Tiller: A Tale of the Kentucky Tobacco Fields by Sarah Bell HackleyAuthor: Hackley, Sarah Bell,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: May 30, 2011

Editor's review

Set in the Kentucky tobacco-growing region, this novel belongs to the American local color literary tradition. Its value lies not in dramatic plotting but in its detailed rendering of tobacco field labor, rural community relations, and the rhythms of local life. Readers can see a literary record of early twentieth-century Southern agricultural life and feel the connection between labor, land, and human fate. As a free Project Gutenberg e-book, it is better suited as supplementary reading for understanding American regional fiction and agricultural literature than as plot-driven popular reading. Readers may wish to place it within the context of American regionalist literature and note how the author builds local atmosphere through everyday scenes. It is suitable for reading in segments in a quiet setting; understanding of Southern US history and agricultural economics will make the reading more complete.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Learn the historical background of Kentucky tobacco cultivation first, then enter the text; this makes the characters' situations easier to understand.
  2. Read in segments by chapter, reviewing the local scenes and the development of character relationships after each chapter.
  3. Read alongside representative works of American regionalist literature to observe shared features and differences in local color writing.
  4. Keep a vocabulary notebook when reading the English original, focusing on farming and local scenery terms.

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

FAQ

What is this book mainly about? This is a novel set in the Kentucky tobacco-growing region, centered on labor in the tobacco fields and rural community life; it belongs to the American local color literary tradition. It emphasizes local atmosphere and characters' situations in everyday labor rather than strong plot development.
Is this book suitable for English beginners? Not really. The work is in English and contains agricultural and local-life vocabulary, and its narrative pace is slow. English beginners may lose track due to vocabulary and background gaps; it is better suited to readers with some English reading foundation and an interest in American regionalist literature.
What background preparation is needed before reading? It is advisable to first learn the basics of early twentieth-century Southern US tobacco farming and the basic features of local color literature. With this background, readers can more easily understand the significance of the farming scenes and community relations in the book, and the reading experience will be smoother.
How should the reading pace be arranged? The work is slow-paced and suitable for segmented reading. Read one or two chapters at a time, then briefly review the scenes and character relationships; there is no need to rush. Reading with background materials interspersed will help better grasp the work's local atmosphere and literary value.

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

Hackley, Sarah Bell Author

Sarah Bell Hackley is an author about whom very little public information is available; the only confirmed fact is that a single work is attributed to her name. That novel is titled The Tobacco Tiller: A Tale of the Kentucky Tobacco Fields, and its title indicates that the story is set against the tobacco-growing industry of Kentucky, revolving around labor and life in the tobacco fields. Writing of this kind usually carries a strong local flavor, attending to rural families' livelihoods, the interdependence of land and crop, and the human relations of farming communities. Because no reliable record of the author's life, nationality, or period of writing is available, it is difficult to judge the overall character of her style; the work itself can only be described as belonging to the tradition of regional narrative drawn from agricultural life in the American South. For readers studying Kentucky regional literature or the social life of tobacco-growing areas, this novel may serve as a reference source, while the author's own experience and creative development remain to be further explored.