Widger's Quotations from Project Gutenberg Edition of Memoirs of Napoleon

VariousProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.2

Word count: 73K words
Chapters: 8

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. Widger's Quotations from Project Gutenberg Edition of Memoirs of Napoleon. Author: Various. Language: English. Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese. Release Date: February 1, 2003

Editor's review

This book is a selection of quotations from the Project Gutenberg edition of Memoirs of Napoleon, compiled by Widger; in nature it is closer to a reference anthology than to the complete memoirs. Its value lies in gathering Napoleon-related remarks scattered across various sources into one place, making it easy for readers to search and cite quickly; it is suitable as supplementary material for historical writing, classroom discussion, or character studies. Note that quotations can easily be misread once removed from their original context, so readers should treat it as a set of leads rather than conclusions. The editorial apparatus is presented in English, with relatively brief categorization and source annotations; when reading, it is best used alongside other works of Napoleonic scholarship for comparison. It is not suited to being read straight through as a biography, but as a desk reference or an entry point for interest it is quite practical, especially for readers who already have a basic understanding of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era and wish to dip into it at leisure.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Historical writers and students who need to cite Napoleon-related remarks
Readers with a basic understanding of the Napoleonic era who want to supplement primary material
Teachers using it as an auxiliary reader for classroom discussion or source criticism
Readers who enjoy browsing quotation collections and jotting down excerpts

Not a good fit for

Readers hoping to gain a systematic understanding of Napoleon's life or looking for a complete biography
General readers expecting a continuous narrative and plot progression
Beginners lacking the patience to discern the sources and contexts of quotations

Reading tips

Start with the table of contents to understand how the quotations are categorized, then select by theme; there is no need to read from beginning to end.
When you encounter an important quotation, note down key words and later verify its context against a Napoleon biography or historical sources.
Consider keeping an excerpt notebook and reorganizing quotations by themes such as war, politics, and character.

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 the complete memoirs of Napoleon?

No. It is a selection of quotations compiled by Widger from the Project Gutenberg edition of Memoirs of Napoleon, and it is a reference work. If you want to read the complete memoirs or a systematic biography, you will need to find the appropriate edition elsewhere.

Can the quotations be cited directly as Napoleon's own words?

Caution is needed. The quotations have been excerpted and may be ambiguous once removed from their original context, and the memoirs themselves also carry the立场 of their chronicler. Before formal citation, it is best to check the original source and context to avoid taking things out of context.

Is it suitable for readers new to history?

It can serve as an entry point for interest, but it is not suitable as a main introductory text. Beginners would do better to first read a Napoleon biography to establish a timeline, then use this quotation collection to supplement details and the feel of the figure.

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

Various Author

Various is not a real person but a collective attribution used in book cataloging and databases for works with multiple authors, commonly applied to anthologies, compilations, or publications with too many contributors to list individually. On this Chinese book site, this attribution covers as many as 3,387 titles, spanning encyclopedic entries, historical documents, and trial records. Representative works include several volumes of the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the record of the trial of the major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Available public information is limited: nationality, birth and death dates, and common categories are not clearly recorded, making it difficult to summarize a unified writing style or personal biography. Readers should understand it as a cataloging convention rather than a single author.