The Young Lieutenant or, The Adventures of an Army Officer

Optic, Oliver, 1822-1897Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.9
Word count
452K words
Chapters
46

Tags

English Originals Young Adult FictionWar and Military Fiction Suspense ThrillerWar BackgroundBrotherhoodAdventure JourneyMilitary AdventureInspirationTest of CourageGrowing UpYoung OfficerYouth 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 Young Lieutenant; or, The Adventures of an Army Officer by Oliver OpticAuthor: Optic, Oliver, 1822-1897,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Jun 23, 2008

Editor's review

This is a quintessential nineteenth-century boys' military adventure novel by the prolific children's author Oliver Optic. The book follows a young officer's military career through a series of marches, scouting missions, and battles, depicting the development of courage, discipline, and a sense of duty. The prose is plain and the pace brisk, with the plot driven by a chain of events, bearing clear marks of its era and a didactic tone; it serves as a useful sample for understanding the style of early American juvenile fiction. Its depiction of camp life, though not complex, gives readers an intuitive impression of nineteenth-century military routine. As a public-domain ebook, it is light and easy to obtain, suitable for extensive reading or as graded material for English learners. Readers should focus on the characters' choices and growth under pressure rather than expecting complex plot twists.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read one chapter first to get used to the language, then read in segments following the sequence of events, two or three chapters at a time.
  2. Jot down each choice the protagonist faces as you read, then review the threads of his growth afterward.
  3. For English study, read action scenes closely to build vocabulary related to military life and marching.

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

Is this book suitable for readers with no English foundation at all? Not really for beginners. The original is nineteenth-century English with long sentences and period diction, so moderate reading ability is recommended, or work through it chapter by chapter with an annotated edition and a dictionary.
Does the content carry obvious limitations of its era? As nineteenth-century juvenile reading, its emphasis on discipline, obedience, and manliness is strongly marked by its time, and some expressions seem one-sided today. Read it with a historical perspective and focus on its growth theme rather than accepting its value judgments wholesale.
How should the ebook edition information be understood? The book is released by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain ebook; the year given is that of the platform's release or update, not the original publication date. It is freely available, in the original English with no modern editorial notes.

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About the author

Optic, Oliver, 1822-1897 Author

Oliver Optic (1822-1897), the pen name of William Taylor Adams, was a prolific nineteenth-century American writer of juvenile literature. Public information about his life is limited and many biographical details remain uncertain, yet the fifty-nine works held in this collection attest to the sheer volume of his output. He specialized in adventure and coming-of-age stories centered on young protagonists, with subjects ranging from sea voyages and military academy or army life to youthful enterprise and travels abroad. His plots are fast-paced and upbeat, and carry a pronounced moral and didactic tone. Representative works include Outward Bound, Freaks of Fortune, The Soldier Boy, and The Yacht Club, many of them belonging to his "Young America" series. His books circulated widely among young English-speaking readers in the latter half of the nineteenth century and left a lasting mark on later adventure fiction for boys.