Transatlantic Travel Sketches and Christopherus Bärenhäuter. First Volume.

Charles SealsfieldProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
220K words
Chapters
22

Tags

Foreign Literature Travel Human GeographyAdventure JourneySocial Critique19th CenturyExotic CultureCultural ChangeCross-Cultural View

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.Transatlantische Reiseskizzen und Christopherus Bärenhäuter. Erstes Bändchen.Author: Sealsfield, Charles, 1793-1864,Language: German, Class: E151: History: America: United States, Release Date: Dec 18, 2014

Editor's review

This is the first fascicle of Charles Sealsfield's (1793–1864) Transatlantische Reiseskizzen und Christopherus Bärenhäuter, written in German and issued as a Project Gutenberg public-domain ebook. Sealsfield, born Karl Postl, was a major nineteenth-century writer of American subjects in German, whose works typically interweave travel observation, social commentary and narrative fiction. This fascicle contains travel sketches and material relating to "Christopherus Bärenhäuter"; the style lies between travelogue, essay and novel, with the expansiveness and discursiveness of nineteenth-century German prose. Its value lies in offering a first-hand literary record of a European observing North American society, useful for studying the image of America in German literature, the immigrant experience and transatlantic cultural exchange. The digital edition has no modern annotations, so names, places and historical allusions must be researched by the reader. It suits literary and historical readers with good German, best read piece by piece with background materials at hand.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the preface or editorial note first to learn about Sealsfield's life and writing background.
  2. Read piece by piece, noting after each the objects observed and the author's comments, to trace recurring threads.
  3. Keep a brief chronology of nineteenth-century American history on hand and check places and figures as they appear.
  4. Read alongside American travelogues by other Europeans of the same era to compare perspectives and styles.

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

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a travelogue? It mixes genres. The book contains both travel-sketch observations and narrative sections with fictional characters and plots; this interweaving is characteristic of Sealsfield's work. There is no need to force a classification; assess the documentary and fictional elements piece by piece.
Can I read it without knowing German? Reading the original directly is not advised. The German is nineteenth-century, with long sentences, old-fashioned vocabulary and no modern annotations. Without German, consult relevant scholarship or translations first; with intermediate German or above, read selected passages slowly with a dictionary.
Why only the first fascicle? The title states "Erstes Bändchen", i.e. first fascicle, indicating the work was published in parts. This ebook contains only the first fascicle. For the complete text, look for digitized later fascicles or library holdings, and note differences in arrangement between editions.
What background knowledge is needed? Familiarity with early nineteenth-century American society, the wave of European emigration, and the tradition of "American themes" in German literature is helpful. The author often comments on American institutions and customs from a European perspective; this background helps distinguish observation, prejudice and literary elaboration.

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

Charles Sealsfield Author · Austrian-American · 1793–1864

Charles Sealsfield (1793–1864) is the pen name of Karl Anton Postl, an Austrian-American writer. Originally a monk, he went to the United States in 1823 and became an American citizen. He subsequently wrote in German novels and travel sketches set in America, his representative works including The Americans as They Are and the two volumes of Transatlantische Reiseskizzen und Christophorus Bärenhäuter. Drawing largely on North American scenery and social observations, his works combine the documentary flavor of travel writing with the narrative interest of fiction, and had a certain influence in introducing German-speaking readers to America. He died in Switzerland in 1864, his true identity revealed by his will. Public information is limited, and details of his life and the classification of his works remain to be further examined.