Wild Life in the Land of the Giants: A Tale of Two Brothers

Stables, Gordon, 1840-1910Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.8
Word count
421K words
Chapters
43

Tags

English Originals Children's Literature Survival ChallengeWilderness SurvivalBrotherhoodAdventure JourneyFantasy ImaginationGrowing UpThrilling TalesExotic CultureImaginative WorldYouth Reading

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.Wild Life in the Land of the Giants: A Tale of Two Brothers by Gordon StablesAuthor: Stables, Gordon, 1840-1910,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Dec 10, 2011

Editor's review

This boys' adventure novel by the prolific nineteenth-century author Gordon Stables follows two brothers' experiences in the wild "land of the giants," combining animal stories with a coming-of-age narrative. It continues the typical style of Victorian boys' reading: courage, brotherhood, and curiosity about nature are emphasized, the plot moves briskly, and the settings carry a distinctly exotic imaginative flavor. As a Project Gutenberg public-domain e-book, it is easy to access and undemanding to read, making it a good sample of nineteenth-century English boys' literature. While reading, note how the narrator handles wildlife and the "foreign" environment—there is both entertainment and the conceptual limitations of a particular era. For researchers it can serve as supplementary material for the history of popular and children's literature; for general readers it is a light English-language diversion suited to reading chapter by chapter in spare moments.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the chapter titles first to grasp the adventure structure, then proceed chapter by chapter rather than trying to finish in one sitting.
  2. Skip unfamiliar plants, animals, and place names at first to keep the story flowing.
  3. After finishing, revisit the narrator's descriptions of the "land of the giants" and make a short note on the era's attitudes.

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

FAQ

Is this book suitable for learning English? It works as a light original-language reader. The English is nineteenth-century, with long sentences and some now-rare vocabulary, so focus on understanding the plot rather than looking up every word; an audiobook or chapter-by-chapter reading can lower the difficulty.
Is it a complete stand-alone book or one volume in a series? According to the public-domain information, this is a complete story centered on the two brothers' adventures, released as an e-book by Project Gutenberg. The material does not say it belongs to a series, so it can be treated as a stand-alone work.
Do I need to know the author's background before reading? Not necessarily. Gordon Stables was a prolific nineteenth-century author who wrote mainly for young readers. Knowing this helps in understanding his narrative style but does not affect reading the story itself.

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About the author

Stables, Gordon, 1840-1910 Author

Gordon Stables (1840-1910) was a prolific English-language author active in the late nineteenth century. Public information about his life is limited, and his nationality and educational background remain to be further verified; yet the twenty-five works held in the collection show a remarkably wide range of subjects. He wrote observational natural history such as Cats: Their Points and Characteristics, adventure stories for young readers such as Born to Wander: A Boy's Book of Nomadic Adventures and Crusoes of the Frozen North, nature sketches like In Touch with Nature: Tales and Sketches from the Life, and documentary works such as Medical Life in the Navy. His writings often draw on natural knowledge, seafaring experience and polar exploration, with a bright, straightforward tone that stresses adventure and the formation of character, giving him a place among inspirational coming-of-age reading.