Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 21

Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.8
Word count
426K words
Chapters
43

Tags

English Originals Folk Literature Historical ReappraisalLegendary LivesFate and FortunePatriotismFolktalesShort StoriesNarrative TraditionExotic CultureFolk CustomsScotland

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.Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 21 by Wilson and LeightonAuthor: ,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Sep 8, 2011

Editor's review

This is the twenty-first volume in Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, part of the nineteenth-century tradition of collected Scottish border and local tales. Such works gather local legends, rustic characters, and historical memory in short narratives, their language bearing clear marks of period and region, reading like an practiced storyteller recounting the joys and sorrows of border families. As one volume in a series, its value lies not in the completeness of any single piece but in showing a way of compiling local narrative: short tales, varied subjects, suitable for dipping into. For readers studying Scottish local literature, folk narrative, and nineteenth-century periodical-style story collections, it is useful textual material; for general readers, it is better as an introductory sampler of Scottish local narrative than as a long work to read straight through. It is best treated as a story collection, with pieces chosen according to interest.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Do not read straight through; browse the contents first and start with pieces whose subjects interest you.
  2. Mark dialect words and place names as you go, then look up the background after finishing a piece.
  3. Write brief summaries after every two or three tales to note character types and recurring motifs.
  4. Read alongside Scottish history or local gazetteers to understand the geographical context of the 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
  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

Can I read Volume 21 without having read the earlier volumes? Yes. Such collections are mostly short pieces compiled together, and the individual tales are relatively independent, with no continuous plot running between volumes. Starting with this volume will not hinder understanding, though your sense of the series' overall style will be limited.
Will the Scots dialect in the book make it hard to read? Local tales of this kind often retain dialect words and colloquial expressions, which may slow your reading. Read through first for the gist and mark recurring dialect words, then look them up after finishing a piece; exact word-for-word correspondence is unnecessary, as the point is the direction of the story and the relationships between characters.
Is this book suitable as English-learning material? It can serve as supplementary reading but is not well suited as a main textbook. The period vocabulary and regional expressions are plentiful, making it more readable for intermediate and advanced learners; beginners are better off with more modern-language materials before turning to local tales like these.

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About the author

Project Gutenberg Author

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