A Crooked Mile

Onions, Oliver, 1873-1961Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.8
Word count
463K words
Chapters
47

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Suspense ThrillerPortrait GalleryFate and FortuneUrban RomancePsychological Insight

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 Crooked Mile by Oliver OnionsAuthor: Onions, Oliver, 1873-1961,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Oct 1, 2011

Editor's review

Oliver Onions was a British novelist, and this book belongs to his early long-form fiction, classified under English literature. The title “A Crooked Mile” suggests a deviation in life's path and the choices involved; the story revolves around characters' fates and moral situations, and the narration has the realistic manner and psychological description common in Edwardian novels. Unlike the direction for which the author later became known—supernatural stories—this work stays closer to social human nature and personal choice, making it a suitable introductory text for understanding Onions's creative range. The public-domain electronic edition is convenient for searching and excerpting but lacks annotations, so readers must handle period background and wording on their own. For those who want to compare narrative changes in English fiction from the late Victorian period to modernism, this book offers a less common sample for observation.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the opening presentation of the characters' situation and the road imagery first to grasp the link between the title and the theme.
  2. Trace the main choice points through the character relationships, noting the motive and consequence of each turn.
  3. Read alongside English novels of the same period to observe the transitional features of realistic method and psychological description.
  4. When reading the English original, mark unfamiliar words first and look them up together after finishing the chapter.

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
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47

FAQ

Is this book a horror novel? No. Onions later became known for supernatural stories, but this book belongs to his early long-form fiction and is closer to realistic narrative about social human nature and personal choice; it should not be expected as horror.
What does the title “A Crooked Mile” refer to? The title carries a metaphorical meaning, pointing to deviation in life's path and the choices involved. Its specific reference should be understood in light of the characters' situations and plot turns, and it should not be simply equated with a literal road.
Can I read it without annotations? Yes. The public-domain electronic text has no annotations, but the story is driven by characters and choices and is generally readable. Skip period expressions or cultural background at first without affecting your grasp of the main plot.

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About the author

Onions, Oliver, 1873-1961 Author

Oliver Onions (1873–1961) was a British writer of short stories and novels, often classified under inspirational and coming-of-age fiction. Eleven of his works are held in this collection, including Widdershins, Back o' the Moon, and Other Stories, In Accordance with the Evidence, The Debit Account, The Tower of Oblivion, A Case in Camera, Gray Youth: The Story of a Very Modern Courtship and a Very Modern Marriage, and The Story of Louie. Because public information is limited, biographical details are difficult to verify, but these works show his skill in building suspense, psychological tension, and supernatural atmosphere while addressing such real-world themes as youth, courtship, marriage, and moral choice. His narrative style is finely observed and atmosphere-driven, giving him a recognizable place in early twentieth-century British short fiction, and some of his works are still read today.