The Young Yagers: A Narrative of Hunting Adventures in Southern Africa

Reid, Mayne, 1818-1883Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.9
Word count
475K words
Chapters
48

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Nature ObservationLegendary LivesAdventure JourneyHeroismGrowing UpExotic CultureYouth 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 Yagers: A Narrative of Hunting Adventures in Southern Africa by ReidAuthor: Reid, Mayne, 1818-1883,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Dec 15, 2010

Editor's review

This is a typical nineteenth-century boys' adventure narrative: a group of young hunters venture deep into southern Africa, encountering natural trials and unforeseen incidents as they track and hunt. Mayne Reid excelled at weaving geographical detail, animal habits, and the training of youthful courage into continuous adventure sequences, with a brisk pace, frequent scene changes, and a distinct period flavor. Its value lies not in modern ecological reflection but in showing how English boys' literature of the era used exotic settings to cultivate courage, cooperation, and field judgment. For readers studying the adventure genre or seeking a sense of nineteenth-century boys' fiction, this book is a direct sample; general readers may also enjoy it as light genre reading. Note that its depictions of hunting and exotic nature carry clear period limitations and are best read with a historicized eye.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read it as a genre sample, noting the pacing of adventure sequences and techniques of scene transition.
  2. Mark descriptions of African scenery and animals, distinguishing factual description from period imagination.
  3. Read alongside other nineteenth-century boys' adventure novels to observe common conventions of the genre.
  4. The English text is fairly long; proceed chapter by chapter, summarizing main events and characters' actions after each.

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

FAQ

Is this book suitable for children? This is a nineteenth-century boys' adventure book, centered on hunting and wilderness exploration with a brisk pace. However, its attitudes toward hunting and exotic nature carry clear period limitations. For contemporary young readers, adult accompaniment and contextual explanation are recommended to help distinguish historical text from modern ecological views.
Where is the story set, and what is it mainly about? According to the source material, the book is a narrative of hunting adventures in southern Africa, telling of young hunters' tracking and adventures in the wild. The story advances through continuous adventure events, focusing on wilderness scenes, animals, and the young men's actions rather than complex psychological portrayal.
What are the details of the electronic edition? The source indicates the book was released by Project Gutenberg as a free public-domain eBook, with an English release date of December 15, 2010. The author is Mayne Reid (1818–1883), and the work is classified under juvenile literature.

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About the author

Reid, Mayne, 1818-1883 Author

Mayne Reid (1818–1883) was a prolific nineteenth-century writer of English-language adventure fiction. Details of his life are limited in publicly available sources; what is relatively reliable is that he was born in 1818 and died in 1883. The library holds 57 of his works, commonly classified as inspirational coming-of-age stories, which shows that his writing centered on adventure and growth for young readers. Representative works include The Headless Horseman: A Strange Tale of Texas, set on the Texas frontier, along with Ran Away to Sea, The Forest Exiles, The Desert Home, The Maroon, The Quadroon, and The Land of Fire, which carry readers to the Amazon jungle, the wilderness, the sea, and the Far West. His novels feature tight plots and wide-open settings, often depicting separated families, survival in foreign lands, and youthful adventure; they were widely read in the English-speaking world and have had some influence on later adventure literature.