The Wolf Demon or, The Queen of the Kanawha

Aiken, Albert W., 1846-1894Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 1.8
Word count
451K words
Chapters
46

Tags

English Originals Folk Literature Legendary LivesAdventure JourneyRevenge StoryVengeance and GratitudeJianghu FeudWestern AdventureIndian LegendAmerican Frontier

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 Wolf Demon; or, The Queen of the Kanawha by Albert W. AikenAuthor: Aiken, Albert W., 1846-1894,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Feb 23, 2019

Editor's review

The Wolf Demon; or, The Queen of the Kanawha is a work by the nineteenth-century American popular novelist Albert W. Aiken (1846–1894), belonging to the typical American dime-novel tradition and combining frontier adventure with legend. "Kanawha" in the title points to the Kanawha River valley of West Virginia; the story unfolds against a frontier background, with dense plotting, brisk pacing, and sharply divided good and evil characters, making it a direct sample of nineteenth-century American popular reading taste. Its value lies not in literary refinement but in presenting the narrative formulas, language style, and values aimed at ordinary readers of the time, giving it some reference value for studying American popular literature, frontier themes, and the publishing history of dime novels. The Project Gutenberg electronic text is convenient for searching and excerpting, suitable for genre-literature research or as light English reading material. Note that such works often contain nineteenth-century stereotyped depictions of Native Americans and frontier conflict, and should be read with a critical perspective today.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read it as a sample of genre literature, noting the formulaic features of plot patterns, character setup, and narrative pacing.
  2. Record passages concerning Native Americans and frontier conflict, and make critical notes from a contemporary perspective.
  3. Read the opening chapters first to judge whether the style suits your taste, then decide whether to read through or analyze selected passages.
  4. Pair it with secondary sources on the publishing history of American dime novels and frontier-themed research for better results.

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

FAQ

What genre is this book, and what is the plot roughly like? It belongs to the frontier adventure legend strand of nineteenth-century American dime novels, set against the Kanawha River valley, with tight plotting, direct conflict, and sharply divided good and evil characters. For specific plot details, refer to the original text; read it as a representative sample of the popular genre literature of its time.
What kind of writer was Aiken? Albert W. Aiken (1846–1894) was a nineteenth-century American popular novelist active in dime novels and adventure stories. The materials provide only his birth and death years and the attribution of the work; for biographical details and his writing career, consult specialized research on American popular literature rather than inferring from this book alone.
Does the book's depiction of Native Americans carry period prejudice? Nineteenth-century American frontier popular fiction generally contains stereotyped and antagonistic depictions of Native Americans, and this book, as a product of that tradition, very likely has similar tendencies. Read it today with a critical perspective, analyzing it as a historical text rather than taking it as objective ethnographic material.
How difficult is the English original to read? The language is plain and the narrative pace fast, making it overall less difficult than serious novels of the same period, though it still has nineteenth-century vocabulary, spelling habits, and regional expressions. Readers with intermediate English reading ability who can accept an old-fashioned style will find it suitable; beginners may need a dictionary and background annotations.

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

Aiken, Albert W., 1846-1894 Author

Aiken, Albert W. (1846–1894) was an English-language author about whose life very little is known; public sources are limited, and his early years, career, and the full range of his writing cannot be reliably established. What can be confirmed is that he left a work entitled The Wolf Demon or, The Queen of the Kanawha, the only one of his books held in this collection. Judging by its title, the work blends Gothic thrills with frontier legend: the image of a wolf demon set beside a queen of the Kanawha suggests a story built around wilderness, fear, and a female figure, in keeping with the nineteenth-century popular fiction's taste for suspense and exotic atmosphere. Given the scarcity of sources, scholars have discussed him and his work little, and the book is mentioned mainly as a sample of the popular literary culture of its time. Readers wishing to know him should begin with this representative work while bearing in mind the limits of the surviving record.