We and Our Neighbors; or, The Records of an Unfashionable Street

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.4
Word count
815K words
Chapters
82

Tags

English Originals Social Fiction Everyday LifeSocial ObservationPortrait GalleryFamily BondsStreet LifeNeighborly RelationsHumor ReliefHeartwarming Narrative19th CenturyFemale Perspective

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.We and Our Neighbors; or, The Records of an Unfashionable Street by StoweAuthor: Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Mar 29, 2015

Editor's review

This is a novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe set on an "unfashionable street," recording neighborhood daily life and the interactions of its characters. It is a public-domain eBook in the American literature category. Compared with the author's better-known work, this book leans more toward social portraiture, revealing social customs, family values, and the warmth and coldness of human relations through neighbors' interactions, in the narrative style of nineteenth-century American fiction. Its value lies in offering a window onto urban life and community relations of the time, making it useful supplementary reading for the history of American literature. The electronic edition is easy to search by character and chapter, suited to readers interested in an overall understanding of Stowe's work and to those who enjoy slow-paced social novels.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read the opening chapters first to get familiar with the characters and street setting, then proceed gradually.
  2. Draw a character relationship map to help sort out neighborhood interactions.
  3. Compare with Stowe's other works to understand her writing concerns.
  4. Write brief chapter summaries; good for reading in fragmented time.

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
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82

FAQ

Is this book related to Uncle Tom's Cabin? There is no direct plot connection. This is another full-length work by Stowe, turning to neighborhood and social portraiture with a more everyday narrative style. It can serve as supplementary reading to understand the breadth of the author's writing.
How difficult is this book to read? As a nineteenth-century American novel, it has long sentences and a slow narrative pace, posing a language barrier for modern readers. Intermediate or higher English reading ability is recommended, along with attention to character relationships.
Is it suitable as course material for literature classes? It can be used as supplementary text for American literary history or Stowe studies, but public-domain electronic editions usually lack annotations and introductions. For course use, background materials and edition notes must be prepared separately.

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About the author

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896 Author

Harriet Beecher Stowe (Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896) was an American author. The library holds 42 of her works; her best-known book is Uncle Tom's Cabin, which circulated widely in many foreign-language editions, including the German Onkel Tom's Hütte, the French La case de l'oncle Tom, the Dutch De Negerhut and the Danish Onkel Toms Hytte. Her other works include Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, The Minister's Wooing and American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science, a study of domestic life and household science. Her writing often addresses social questions such as slavery, religion and family life, expressing moral concern through vivid characters and plots; it had a lasting influence on nineteenth-century American literature and the abolitionist movement. Public information on the details of her life is limited, so none are conjectured here.