The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages

Roger Thompson FinlayProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 1.8
Word count
322K words
Chapters
33

Tags

English Originals Children's Literature TeamworkSea ThemeAdventure SeriesSurvival ChallengesHeroismCourage and GrowthColonial NarrativeExotic CultureYouth AdventureYouth Reading

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 Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages by Roger Thompson FinlayAuthor: Finlay, Roger Thompson, 1860-,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Jun 14, 2007

Editor's review

This is a juvenile adventure novel by Roger Thompson Finlay, part of the Wonder Island Boys series, released as a free eBook by Project Gutenberg. The story follows the boys' adventures and conflicts on an island, with themes of exploration, survival, and clashes of civilizations common in early Anglo-American juvenile fiction. As a public-domain eBook, its value lies in offering a sample of early twentieth-century juvenile adventure narrative style: straightforward plotting, clear moral stances, and language about "savages" and "conquest" bearing obvious marks of its era. It can be read as light English extensive reading material or as a text for discussing colonial discourse and the historical evolution of juvenile literature. Because it is in English and was written long ago, some wording and attitudes are distant from contemporary readers; read it with a critical eye rather than simply accepting the value judgments in the narrative.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the opening chapters first to gauge language difficulty, then decide between intensive and extensive reading
  2. Note how the book represents indigenous peoples while reading, and discuss it critically afterward
  3. Compare with other public-domain juvenile adventure novels to observe period narrative conventions
  4. Use the Gutenberg eBook for excerpts to look up unfamiliar words and historical usage

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

Is this book suitable for English beginners? Not very. This is an early twentieth-century English juvenile novel whose sentence patterns and wording bear the marks of its time, so beginners may struggle with unfamiliar words and old-fashioned expressions. It is better suited to readers with intermediate to advanced reading ability who can read it extensively.
Why does the book have a title like "Conquest of the Savages"? This is the original title, reflecting a narrative framework and period attitudes common in early twentieth-century adventure literature. When reading it today, it should not be taken as a description of real people but viewed as a historical text requiring critical reading.
What is the difference between the Gutenberg edition and ordinary publications? Project Gutenberg provides free public-domain eBooks that generally preserve the original text and are convenient for online reading or downloading. It is not a newly edited or annotated edition, so it comes without modern notes or introductions, and readers must establish the background themselves.

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

Roger Thompson Finlay Author · American · 1860

Roger Thompson Finlay (born 1860) was an American author best known for his juvenile adventure series The Wonder Island Boys. The six-book series follows two boys and a professor stranded on a deserted island in the South China Sea, where they learn to fend for themselves, explore caverns and island treasures, and eventually subdue neighboring tribes. Published around 1914 by a New York publishing house, it stands as a representative work of early twentieth-century American popular literature for young readers. Public information about Finlay's life is limited; his reputation rests chiefly on this series, whose themes of island survival, exploration, and the conquest of savages bear a distinct mark of their era.