A Walk through Leicester

Watts, Susannah, 1768-1842Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0

Word count: 120K words
Chapters: 12

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 Walk through Leicester by Susannah WattsAuthor: Watts, Susannah, 1768-1842,Language: English, Class: DA: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Great Britain, Ireland, Central Europe, Release Date: Jun 24, 2008

Editor's review

This record of a walk through Leicester, written by the late eighteenth-century English author Susanna Watts, belongs to the tradition of early local topography and urban observation. Its value lies not in providing practical information like a modern travel guide, but in preserving a particular era's close attention to urban space, buildings, and public life: street layouts, churches and public buildings, commerce, and everyday scenes are all folded into a walking, note-as-you-go narrative rhythm. For Chinese readers, it is more a historical text for close reading, allowing them to experience the appearance of an English provincial town in the pre-industrial era and the charms and limitations of local writing at the time. As a public-domain e-book from Project Gutenberg, it is easy to search, cite, and read in excerpts, and is suitable for research and teaching contexts in urban history, English local history, or travel literature. One caveat: the language, place names, and personal backgrounds pose some barriers for general readers, so it is best read with maps and annotations, as a historical source and stylistic sample rather than light entertainment.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Scholars and students studying English urban history and local topography writing
Serious readers interested in eighteenth-century English social life
People who need public-domain English historical sources for translation or textual analysis
Readers who enjoy slow-paced travel literature and records of urban walks

Not a good fit for

Tourists seeking practical contemporary travel information about Leicester
Readers who struggle with English and are unwilling to use annotations and maps
People who prefer strong plot-driven narratives or fast-paced reading

Reading tips

Prepare a historical map of Leicester and compare it with the streets and buildings mentioned in the book as you read.
Divide the book into short sections and read one area at a time, noting the angles of observation the author focuses on.
Make notes on place names and people as you go, building your own small background dictionary.
For research, excerpt sentences describing urban space and compare them with other local topographies from the same period.

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 modern tourist guide to Leicester?

No. It was written in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century and records what the author saw and heard at the time; it is a historical text, not a contemporary practical guide. The streets, buildings, and public facilities in the book may be very different from today's, so readers should treat it as a historical source or travel literature rather than an itinerary to follow.

Is the original English difficult to read?

Somewhat. The text is from an earlier period of English writing, with long sentences and many place names, people, and local allusions. It is advisable to read with maps, annotations, and a dictionary, or to start with passages describing specific scenes rather than trying to read the whole book at once.

Why is this book in Project Gutenberg?

Project Gutenberg collects works that have entered the public domain and offers them free as electronic texts. The author, Susanna Watts, lived in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and her work is no longer under copyright, so it was digitized and made available. This also means the text largely preserves its original form, with limited editorial work and modern annotation.

Can it be used as course material for urban history or travel literature?

Yes, but supplementary materials are needed. It is suitable as a sample of local topography writing and urban observation, allowing students to analyze how the author selects and describes urban space. Teachers should add historical maps, period background, and other texts from the same era to help students understand its value as a historical source and its stylistic features.

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About the author

Watts, Susannah, 1768-1842 Author · British · 1768–1842

Susannah Watts (1768–1842) was an English writer and abolitionist. Relatively little information about her survives, and public sources are limited, but what is known shows that her writing covered a wide range, including poetry, essays and children's books, reflecting an interest in reaching different kinds of readers. Her representative work, A Walk through Leicester, is written as a walking tour of Leicester and belongs to the literature of local scenery and observation; such writing tends to combine first-hand observation with personal reflection, recording townscapes and everyday life while letting readers come to know a place through the author's footsteps. As an abolitionist, she combined social concern with literary work, and her writings carry some significance against the moral debates of her time. Overall, she was an English woman writer who took part in public questions through a variety of literary forms.