The Wrecker cover

The Wrecker

Rating 3.6
Word count
765K words
Chapters
77

Tags

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 Wrecker by Lloyd Osbourne and Robert Louis StevensonAuthor: Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Feb 11, 2006

Editor's review

The Wrecker, co-written by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, is a seafaring adventure novel. The story revolves around a ship named the Wrecker, beginning with street life in San Francisco and gradually drawing readers into an ocean voyage, a shipwreck, and a treasure-hunting mystery. Richly layered in narrative and populated with numerous characters, the work combines the worldly atmosphere of trading houses, docks, and taverns with the tension of sea storms and unknown islands; the two authors' collaboration gives the text a varied tone in both plotting and characterization. As a public-domain ebook released by Project Gutenberg, it is easy to read and search on electronic devices. For readers who enjoy nineteenth-century adventure fiction and are drawn to nautical themes and suspenseful structures, the book offers a thoroughly complete reading experience; it is also a suitable sample for observing Stevenson's late collaborative creative method. While reading, one may wish to note shifts in narrative perspective and the laying of clues.

Who it's for

A good fit for

  • Readers who enjoy nineteenth-century adventure fiction and nautical themes
  • Researchers interested in Stevenson's works and collaborative writing methods
  • Readers who relish suspenseful buildup, treasure-hunt mysteries, and multi-threaded narratives
  • Readers seeking to expand their experience of long English novels through public-domain ebooks

Not a good fit for

  • Readers who prefer short, fast-paced works and lack patience
  • Readers with no interest in nautical terminology or San Francisco's historical background
  • Beginners who need modern vernacular translations and are unaccustomed to long nineteenth-century English sentences

Reading tips

  1. First clarify the character relationships and ship-related clues; a simple character chart can help while reading.
  2. Read the book in segments according to the stages of the voyage, reviewing key events and foreshadowing at the end of each segment.
  3. Do not look up every nautical term; grasp the plot first, then consult references in a concentrated effort.
  4. After finishing, revisit the opening chapters to appreciate how the authors planted clues for later mysteries.

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
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77

FAQ

Did Stevenson complete this book on his own?
No. The book was a collaboration between Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, and the order of attribution varies slightly across editions. Their collaboration gives the novel richer tonal variation beyond its adventure plot, and readers may notice subtle differences in narrative style between chapters.
Can I understand this book without nautical knowledge?
Yes. Nautical terminology mostly serves the atmosphere of the plot and is not a prerequisite for understanding the main storyline. When encountering unfamiliar descriptions of ship parts or operations, simply follow the story and grasp the characters' motives and the chain of events; if you wish to go deeper, consult the relevant terminology afterward.
Is this book suitable as an introduction to reading English originals?
It is not the easiest choice for beginners. It is a long nineteenth-century English novel with long sentences, detailed descriptions, and a background involving seafaring and San Francisco. Readers with some experience of long English novels will find it smoother; beginners may first read a Chinese translation to understand the plot, then attempt the original.

Comments

Find this book

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

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) was a nineteenth-century British writer known for adventure fiction and poetry. His representative work Treasure Island established a classic model for treasure-hunt adventure stories and has circulated widely in many translations; the library also holds the Spanish version La isla del tesoro and the German version Die Schatzinsel: Roman. Another representative work, A Child's Garden of Verses, writes from a child's perspective about play, imagination, and everyday feelings, with fresh language and natural rhythm, and is a common reader in English children's poetry. The library holds as many as 101 of his works, showing the variety of his subjects and forms. Public information is limited, so details of his life and education are not elaborated here; overall, his writing combines thrilling narrative with a lyrical tone, being strongly story-driven yet readable aloud, and has had a lasting influence on later adventure literature and children's literature.

More by the same author

Top rated in the same category