Wolfville Days

Lewis, Alfred Henry, 1857-1914Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.2

Word count: 448K words
Chapters: 45

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.Wolfville Days by Alfred Henry LewisAuthor: Lewis, Alfred Henry, 1857-1914,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Jan 1, 2003

Editor's review

Wolfville Days is a collection of short stories by Alfred Henry Lewis set in the Western town of Wolfville, belonging to the tradition of American local color literature. In an exaggerated, humorous style it depicts the daily life of frontier saloons, cowboys, gamblers, and the town court, with a narrator whose voice carries heavy dialect and the flavor of a folk storyteller, making for brisk pacing and dense humor. Its value lies not in reconstructing authentic Western history but in presenting late nineteenth-century American imaginings and mockery of frontier life; it is a primary text for understanding Western humor literature and dialect writing. This is a public-domain electronic edition from Project Gutenberg, presented in the original English. It suits readers interested in American Western literature, local humor, and nineteenth-century English dialects, and also serves as supplementary reading on frontier narrative in English literature courses. Fragmented reading by individual story is recommended; there is no need to pursue plot continuity.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in American Western literature and local color fiction
Students of nineteenth-century American humor literature and dialect writing
English learners hoping to encounter English dialect expression in light stories
Teachers and students of literature courses needing frontier narrative material

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting serious Western historical research or authentic archival records
Readers who prefer coherent long-form plots and complete character arcs
Readers with weak English skills who find dialect spelling and colloquial expression difficult

Reading tips

Read each story independently, one or two at a time, without insisting on continuous progression from beginning to end.
When encountering dialect spelling, first guess by pronunciation, then use context to understand; there is no need to verify every word.
Read alongside materials on the history of American Western literature to understand the origins of the local humor tradition.
After reading, choose one story and try retelling its outline to test your grasp of the narrator's voice.

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 a novel or a short story collection?

Judging from the title and Lewis's tradition of writing set in Wolfville, it is a collection of short stories centered on the same Western town. The stories are relatively independent, with characters and settings echoing one another, rather than a novel with a continuous plot. It is suitable for reading in separate pieces.

There is a lot of English dialect. What if it is hard to read?

The narrator and characters use a great deal of colloquial, dialectal spelling, which is part of the work's style. It is recommended to first read silently by pronunciation and grasp the general meaning; there is no need to compare every word with standard spelling. After two or three stories you will develop a feel for the common expressions, and your speed will naturally improve.

Is this a public-domain book, and what is the edition situation?

The book was released as an electronic edition by Project Gutenberg and is a public-domain e-book presented in the original English; the earliest electronic edition was released in 2003. The year 2019 in the input information should be the release or update year of that electronic edition, and the content is the original text by Lewis.

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About the author

Lewis, Alfred Henry, 1857-1914 Author

Alfred Henry Lewis (1857–1914) was an American writer, with 17 works held in this collection. He is best known for the "Wolfville" stories, including Wolfville, Wolfville Days, Wolfville Nights, and Faro Nell and Her Friends: Wolfville Stories, which use a Western small-town setting, colorful local speech, and lively dialogue to portray frontier life and everyday characters in a humorous, colloquial style. He also wrote works on city politics and lower-class life, such as The Apaches of New York and The Boss, and How He Came to Rule New York, as well as documentary-style texts like The Mormon Menace: The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite and historical figures such as An American Patrician, or The Story of Aaron Burr. His writing spans Western tales, urban sketches, and historical narrative, with vivid language and memorable characters. Public information on his life, nationality, and education is limited, so no speculation is offered here.