A Cigarette-Maker‘s Romance

Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion), 1854-1909Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.3

Word count: 342K words
Chapters: 35

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.A Cigarette-Maker's Romance by F. Marion CrawfordAuthor: Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion), 1854-1909,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Jun 22, 2006

Editor's review

This novel comes from the late 19th-century American writer F. Marion Crawford and belongs to his lighter romantic works. The title centers on a "cigarette-maker," hinting at a narrative in which class differences and emotional entanglement intertwine, and readers can see how popular fiction of the period handled themes of identity and love. Crawford is a skilled craftsman, and his scene arrangement and dialogue carry a distinct theatrical quality, making the book a suitable sample for understanding the landscape of 19th-century British and American popular literature. This project is a Project Gutenberg public-domain eBook, laid out mainly as plain text without modern annotations, so readers must adjust to older conventions of punctuation and paragraphing. Its value lies not in deep literary experimentation but in offering a readable, moderately lengthed historical text for literature enthusiasts, English learners, or readers studying the history of popular fiction. If you want a story with narrative momentum for your commute or bedtime and do not want to be slowed by an overly obscure style, this book is a suitable choice; but if you expect depth of social critique or a complex narrative structure, you may find it rather straightforward.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who enjoy 19th-century British and American popular romance fiction
Learners who want to practice long-form English reading through public-domain eBooks
Enthusiasts studying class and gender narratives in popular literature

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer modern fast-paced narratives with strong plot twists
Researchers who need detailed scholarly annotations and background introductions
Readers with low tolerance for old-fashioned English punctuation and long sentences

Reading tips

Read a chapter or two first to get a feel for the language rhythm, then decide whether to read the whole book, so as to avoid giving up midway because of the old-fashioned style.
Prepare a simple character relationship chart, recording the identities and appearance chapters of the main characters.
If you are learning English, read ten pages a day and copy out three lines of dialogue to build up familiarity with old-fashioned expressions.

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

Does the electronic edition of this book include annotations or an introduction?

According to the information, this is a public-domain eBook released by Project Gutenberg, based mainly on the original text and usually without modern scholarly annotations or an introduction. Readers who need background information can consult material on late 19th-century American popular fiction on their own.

What level of English difficulty is it roughly at?

The work dates from the late 19th century, with rather long sentences and punctuation and paragraphing conventions different from contemporary English, but the plot moves forward mainly through dialogue and scenes, making it an upper-intermediate to advanced long-form reading overall. It is advisable to have a reading foundation of at least CET-4 before attempting to read it through.

Is it suitable for a literature course assignment?

It can serve as supplementary reading for popular literature or 19th-century British and American fiction, but because it lacks annotations and an authoritative introduction, it is not suitable as the sole text. If the assignment requires analysis of class, gender, or popular narrative, it can be used together with literary history materials.

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About the author

Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion), 1854-1909 Author

F. Marion Crawford (Francis Marion Crawford, 1854–1909) was a notably prolific English-language novelist. The library holds 46 of his works, spanning a wide range of subjects: long novels set in Italy, such as Saracinesca, Greifenstein and Fair Margaret: A Portrait; the two-volume Ave Roma Immortalis, which portrays the history and monuments of Rome; the Arabian tale Khaled, A Tale of Arabia; and atmospheric ghost stories including The Upper Berth and Wandering Ghosts. These works show a writer skilled at evoking foreign and historical settings, with clear narrative structure and steady plotting, accomplished both in popular long fiction and in tales of the strange. His supernatural stories in particular have been favored by later anthologies and have had some influence on the English ghost-story tradition. Because public information is limited, biographical details are not elaborated here; the outline above rests on the works in the library's holdings.