To Him That Hath: A Tale of the West of Today

Connor, Ralph, 1860-1937Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.9
Word count
447K words
Chapters
45

Tags

English Originals Social Fiction Human Warmth and ColdnessFaith and FatePioneer StrivingHope ThemeMoral InquiryWestern TalesPopular NarrativeModern WestExotic CustomsFrontier Life

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.To Him That Hath: A Tale of the West of Today by Ralph ConnorAuthor: Connor, Ralph, 1860-1937,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Jun 3, 2006

Editor's review

This novel comes from Ralph Connor, a Canadian Presbyterian minister turned writer, and belongs to the Western pioneer genre he knew well. Set in "the West of today," it revolves around the tension between having and lacking, character and ambition; the title echoes the biblical phrase "to him that hath shall be given," hinting at the book's concern with the ethics of wealth and the testing of human nature. Connor's narration bears the clear marks of late-Victorian popular fiction: brisk plotting, sharply drawn good and evil, plain moral concern, along with the adventure and frontier atmosphere peculiar to the Western. For today's readers its value lies more in the documentary and cultural sphere—it offers a window on how early twentieth-century North American popular literature shaped the imagining of the West and embedded religious ethics in narratives of a commercial society. It is best read as a period text rather than a modern psychological novel. Suited to reading in installments on the commute or before sleep, and to reading alongside Westerns of the same period to trace the evolution of the genre.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the opening chapters first to grasp the characters and period setting, then move into the main plot.
  2. Read alongside histories of Western settlement to understand how the novel imagines the frontier.
  3. In the English original, note the religious quotations and moral commentary—they are often the key to understanding the characters.
  4. If time is short, focus on the chapters of conflict and turning points to feel the pacing of popular fiction.

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

FAQ

Is this a public-domain book, and why is it released by Project Gutenberg? Yes. The English original is in the public domain, and Project Gutenberg, the earliest provider of free eBooks, has digitized and released it so readers can obtain it free of charge. What is offered here is the English original electronic text, not a new translation or newly edited edition; its typesetting and annotation are best viewed in a documentary light.
Can I understand it without background knowledge of the West? Yes. The plot is relatively clear and the characters' motives plain, so it can be followed without specialized knowledge of Western history. Still, some familiarity with late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century development of the North American West, railways, and immigration will make it easier to understand how the book treats land, wealth, and community relations, and will draw out more of its period significance.
What kind of writer is Ralph Connor? Ralph Connor is the pen name of the Canadian writer Charles William Gordon, himself a Presbyterian minister whose works mostly depict life in the West and on the frontier, with a marked moral and religious concern. This novel follows the same path: the plot is accessible and readable, while questions of character and faith are placed at the center of the story.

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About the author

Connor, Ralph, 1860-1937 Author

Ralph Connor (1860–1937) was a Canadian Presbyterian minister and novelist, born Charles William Gordon and best known by his pen name “Ralph Connor.” His representative works include The Man from Glengarry, The Sky Pilot, Black Rock, and Glengarry School Days. His fiction is largely set against the Canadian frontier, Scottish immigrant communities, and missionary life, and is noted for its portrayal of nature and the moral struggles of ordinary people, with a pronounced idealistic and religious tone. The library records 16 of his works. Public information on the details of his life is limited, so this introduction draws mainly on the themes and style of his writings.