The Wide World Magazine, Vol. 22, No. 127, October to March, 1909

VariousProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.8

Word count: 336K words
Chapters: 34

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 Wide World Magazine, Vol. 22, No. 127, October to March, 1909 by VariousAuthor: Various,Language: English, Class: AP: General Works: Periodicals, Release Date: Jul 12, 2015

Editor's review

This combined volume of The Wide World Magazine for October 1909 through March 1910 preserves the character of an early twentieth-century popular periodical devoted to travel, exploration, and exotic reportage. Its value for today's reader lies not in timeliness but in its value as historical source and as a specimen of style: the arrangement of columns, advertisements, readers' letters, and narrative voice together show how the English-speaking world of that era imagined distant places and told stories of adventure. The Project Gutenberg electronic edition is easy to search and cite, making it suitable as research material for the history of the press, imperial history, travel writing, or popular reading culture, and also as a sample for browsing the layout and idiom of old periodicals. It is not a systematic monograph, so it is best read by selecting pieces with questions in mind rather than from cover to cover; for the general casual reader, some attitudes and wording now seem dated and need to be viewed historically.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Scholars and students researching the history of modern periodicals and popular publishing
Readers interested in early twentieth-century travel and adventure narrative
Those who need English old-periodical corpora for language or translation practice
Collectors of public-domain electronic periodicals who enjoy browsing old advertisements and columns

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking systematic historical knowledge or academic monographs
Readers expecting contemporary travel guides and practical information
Readers sensitive to the colonial perspectives and outdated wording of the old era

Reading tips

Begin with the table of contents and column notes, then choose three to five pieces by theme for close reading and note-taking.
Read advertisements and readers' letters alongside the main text to observe how the periodical organized its readers' imagination.
Use keyword searches on the Project Gutenberg electronic text to build your own index of historical material.
If used for research, record specific page numbers and item titles, and avoid quoting single sentences out of context.

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 periodical a complete annual bound volume?

According to the item information, it corresponds to one issue of volume 22 covering October 1909 to March 1910, not a collection of all issues for the whole year. It is best read as a single-issue sample rather than as a full-year overview.

What if the old English periodical is difficult to read?

Start with short reports and advertisement columns, and read longer articles after you are familiar with the sentence patterns and vocabulary; look up historical names and places as you go, and do not read word by word. Aiming to understand the style and period context will make reading much less stressful.

Can it be used as a primary source for historical research?

It can serve as a primary source for popular periodicals and popular reading culture, but note that it is a narrative periodical aimed at a general audience, where factual statements and literary embellishment are often mixed. For research, it should be cross-checked against other sources, and its media nature and standpoint should be stated.

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

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.