Twin Tales: Are All Men Alike, and, The Lost Titian

Stringer, Arthur, 1874-1950Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.8
Word count
264K words
Chapters
27

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Suspense ThrillerArt ForgeryLove EntanglementsMystery SolvingIdentity MysteryUrban RomanceComplex HumanityDual NarrativeSatirical StylePopular Narrative

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.Twin Tales: Are All Men Alike, and, The Lost Titian by Arthur StringerAuthor: Stringer, Arthur, 1874-1950,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Mar 18, 2019

Editor's review

This is a collection of two novellas by the Canadian author Arthur Stringer: Are All Men Alike and The Lost Titian. The former has a flavour of social manners and observation of the sexes; the latter revolves around a famous work of art and has elements of treasure hunting and suspense. Placed side by side, the two pieces reveal the author's versatile approach to popular narrative: dialogue drives the plot, scene changes are brisk, and character relationships and object clues are interlinked. As a public-domain e-book, it suits readers who want to understand the landscape of early twentieth-century North American popular literature, and also serves as a sample for short-form reading and narrative analysis. Readers need not seek deep thematic interpretation; it is better treated as an entertaining period read. Noting the differences between the two pieces in suspense construction and character portrayal will reveal that the collection's arrangement itself carries a comparative intent.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read The Lost Titian first for the art-suspense thread, then read Are All Men Alike for contrast.
  2. For each piece, note the character relationships and key objects, and compare the author's techniques for building suspense.
  3. As English extensive reading material, read one chapter at a time; guess unfamiliar words first, then look them up.
  4. After finishing, write a short review discussing the thematic echoes and differences between the two stories.

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

FAQ

Are the two stories connected in plot? There is no direct plot continuity. The two are independent stories; grouping them in one volume mainly reflects different facets of the author's popular narrative, and readers may read them separately or compare their techniques side by side.
Is The Lost Titian an art history work? No. It is a fictional story using a famous work of art as a clue, with elements of treasure hunting and suspense. It should be read as popular fiction, not as art-historical scholarship.
Is it suitable for English beginners? It can serve as intermediate extensive reading material. The stories advance mainly through dialogue and plot, but some period expressions and art vocabulary may pose obstacles; an annotated edition or a dictionary is recommended.

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About the author

Stringer, Arthur, 1874-1950 Author

Stringer, Arthur (1874–1950) was an English-language writer active in the first half of the twentieth century. Public information about him is limited, and details of his life such as nationality and educational background are not clearly recorded. Twelve of his works are held in the collection, covering both fiction and poetry. In fiction, he wrote a series of novels set against the North American prairie, including The Prairie Wife, The Prairie Child and The Prairie Mother, noted for their delicate touch and their attention to family relationships and women's circumstances; he also explored urban suspense and psychological thriller themes in works such as The Wire Tappers, The Shadow and The Man Who Couldn't Sleep, which are tightly plotted and skilled at building tension. His poem Hephaestus, Persephone at Enna, and Sappho in Leucadia shows his taste for classical mythology. Overall, his writing spans popular fiction and poetry, with varied subjects and a plain, readable style.