Trumps

Curtis, George William, 1824-1892Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.1

Word count: 819K words
Chapters: 82

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.Trumps by George William CurtisAuthor: Curtis, George William, 1824-1892,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Mar 29, 2005

Editor's review

Trumps is a novel by the American writer George William Curtis, available through Project Gutenberg as a free ebook. Curtis was a nineteenth-century American man of letters, both essayist and novelist, whose narratives often carry gentle observation of social manners and moral concern. This is the English original, in the American literature category, suitable as supplementary reading for understanding the landscape of nineteenth-century American fiction. For readers studying the history of American literature or wishing to explore classic public-domain books from Project Gutenberg, it offers a convenient entry point. Read it against the backdrop of nineteenth-century American social transformation, and note the social class and values behind the characters' relationships. As a public-domain ebook, it presents the original text without modern annotation, so readers need some grounding in English. Overall it is not a mass-market bestseller but rather a small window onto the literary ecology of an older America.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers with some English who wish to encounter nineteenth-century American public-domain fiction
Researchers and upper-level students studying the history of American literature or Curtis's work
Readers who like free ebooks and are willing to explore the Project Gutenberg library
Readers interested in nineteenth-century American social manners and moral narrative

Not a good fit for

Readers who want a Chinese translation or need modern annotation
Readers who prefer fast-paced plots and have limited patience for classical narrative
Beginners who need a detailed guide to the author's life and the work's background

Reading tips

Learn about the nineteenth-century American literary context in which Curtis worked before entering the text; this makes the narrative intent easier to grasp.
Use an English dictionary or an e-reader's lookup function to lower the threshold of the public-domain original.
After each chapter, briefly note character relationships and clues about the social background to help follow the long narrative.
If reading only for literary history, read the opening and ending first, then return to key episodes in the middle chapters.

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 this book in Chinese or English?

According to the information, Trumps is the English original, marked as English and classified under American and Canadian literature. Project Gutenberg provides the public-domain e-text without a Chinese translation, so some English reading ability is required.

What kind of publisher is Project Gutenberg?

Project Gutenberg is the earliest project providing free ebooks, founded by Michael Hart in 1971 and dedicated to producing and distributing public-domain ebooks. This book is one of the electronic editions released by that project; readers can obtain it free, but the edition is mainly the original text and usually includes no modern introduction or annotation.

Do I need to know about Curtis first?

Not strictly, but it helps. Curtis was a nineteenth-century American writer whose works often carry social observation and moral concern. Knowing his era and writing style in advance makes the character relationships and narrative orientation of Trumps easier to understand; you can also read it with no background at all, though it may require more patience.

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About the author

Curtis, George William, 1824-1892 Author

George William Curtis (1824–1892) was an American author, with ten works held in this collection. Public information is limited, and his dates of birth and death and nationality are not clearly recorded in the holdings; the following introduction is based on the works in the collection. He is known chiefly for essays and satirical sketches. The Potiphar Papers depict social manners in a light, mocking tone, while Prue and I leans toward gentle narrative and reverie. The three volumes of From the Easy Chair, together with Ars Recte Vivendi, adopt the relaxed voice of an "easy chair" column to discuss literature, society, and life, in the classic nineteenth-century American essay tradition. Trumps and Literary and Social Essays deal with fiction and social criticism. His style is elegant and observant, with a gift for humorous commentary on manners, offering a useful glimpse of urban American life and literary taste of his time.