Tom Grogan

Smith, Francis Hopkinson, 1838-1915Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.1

Word count: 215K words
Chapters: 22

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.Tom Grogan by Francis Hopkinson SmithAuthor: Smith, Francis Hopkinson, 1838-1915,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Mar 1, 1997

Editor's review

Tom Grogan is a novel by Francis Hopkinson Smith set against the barge-transport trade around Staten Island, portraying a widowed woman, Tom Grogan, who runs a contracting business and contends with the wharves and with industry prejudice. The work shows the local-color realism of late-19th-century America, focusing on the pull between labor, family duty, and community opinion, with vivid dialogue and industry detail. Smith's narration emphasizes scene and temperament; the plot advances not through strong suspense but through the accumulation of everyday conflicts and moral choices. Its value lies in presenting the situation of a woman entering a male-dominated trade and how a local community exerts pressure through gossip and custom. The book suits supplementary reading in American local-color literature and fiction of labor, and is useful for readers interested in gender and industry in 19th-century American society. The public-domain electronic text has no modern introduction, so readers should bring their own background material.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in American local-color literature and late-19th-century social life
Readers drawn to women's labor, industry prejudice, and community opinion
English and American literature students needing supplementary course texts
Novel readers who enjoy group portraits and everyday conflict

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer strong plots, fast pacing, and suspenseful twists
Readers uninterested in 19th-century American trade terms and local settings
Beginners hoping for modern annotations and a detailed introduction

Reading tips

Note Tom Grogan's choices between family and business as you read, and make a simple character map
Read the wharf labor scenes alongside community gossip, observing how opinion shapes the characters' situation
Consult background on late-19th-century American women's employment and the division of trades
For course reading, select chapters with concentrated conflict for close reading and class discussion

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.

FAQ

Is Tom Grogan male or female?

Tom is a woman; the work centers on her running a barge-contracting business as a widow and mother. The title uses the name by which she is known in the trade; note how she builds credibility and authority in a male-dominated wharf environment.

What is the novel's pacing like?

It emphasizes scene and temperament; conflicts arise mainly from daily business, community opinion, and moral choices rather than strong suspense. It rewards slow reading, with attention to the industry and interpersonal pressures shown in dialogue and detail.

The public-domain electronic edition lacks annotations. What should I keep in mind?

First learn some background on late-19th-century American barge transport and local communities; you need not look up every trade term—grasp the characters' situation and conflicts. For research, consult relevant literary-historical sources.

Comments

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About the author

Smith, Francis Hopkinson, 1838-1915 Author

Francis Hopkinson Smith (1838–1915) was an American author whose biographical details are only sparsely documented in public sources. The library holds twenty-six of his works, including novels and short stories, with representative titles such as Colonel Carter's Christmas, Forty Minutes Late, Felix O'Day, The Tides of Barnegat, and A Gentleman's Gentleman. These works show that he excelled at depicting, in a gentle and humorous vein, the daily life of upper-class English and American society and the Southern gentlemanly class, with plots often revolving around etiquette, family relations, and character, conveying both the warmth and the irony of an old-fashioned genteel world. His writings occupy a place in early twentieth-century American popular literature, and some of his stories were widely read.