An Old Meerschaum

David Christie MurrayProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.9
Word count
87K words
Chapters
9

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Social ObservationFate and FortuneFamily BondsLove EntanglementsHumanistic CareLife PhilosophyComplex HumanityPsychological InsightDaily ReflectionsLife Wisdom

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.An Old Meerschaum by David Christie MurrayAuthor: Murray, David Christie, 1847-1907,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Aug 1, 2007

Editor's review

An Old Meerschaum is a short work by the English writer David Christie Murray, included in Project Gutenberg's free eBook collection. Murray was active in the late nineteenth century, and his fiction is known for its attention to everyday human relationships and plot twists; this work likewise carries on the narrative pleasures of Victorian English fiction. It is short and serves as a light sample for getting to know English short fiction of the period. The book is presented in the original English, and its language bears the marks of its era; readers may treat it as an introductory text for reading English literature or as supplementary material for studying Murray's writing or late nineteenth-century popular English fiction. Because the Gutenberg edition is a public-domain eBook, it is easy to obtain and suits reading in segments during commutes or while traveling, or close reading of language details with notes. One caveat: this is not a child-friendly adaptation, nor is it for readers expecting a full-length plot or a modern vernacular translation.

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Reading tips

  1. Read through once for the plot, then revisit dialogue and scene description to feel the period's language habits.
  2. Mark unfamiliar words and old-fashioned expressions as you read, then look them up and organize them afterward.
  3. Read alongside other Victorian short stories to observe similarities and differences in narrative technique.
  4. Use the eBook's search function to locate names and key objects, sort out the threads, then read again.

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

FAQ

Is this book in Chinese or English? This is an English public-domain eBook released by Project Gutenberg, with the main text in the original English; there is no Chinese translation. Readers need some English reading ability beforehand, or a dictionary and annotation tools to help with comprehension.
Can I read it without having read other works by Murray? Yes. This is a standalone short work that does not depend on prior events from the author's other works. If you become interested in Murray's narrative style after reading, you can then seek out his other novels for comparison.
What should I keep in mind when using the Gutenberg edition? The Gutenberg edition is a free public-domain eBook, typeset mainly as plain text, and may lack the annotations and introduction of modern publications. Readers are advised to have a dictionary on hand and to note that paragraphing and punctuation in the electronic text may differ slightly from paper editions.
Is it suitable as material for intensive English reading? Yes, but it is better suited to learners with some foundation. The text carries late nineteenth-century language habits, and its sentence patterns and word choices are distant from modern English; for intensive reading, use it with a dictionary and background materials, as supplementary material for literary language learning rather than an introductory textbook.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

David Christie Murray Author · British · 1847–1907

David Christie Murray (1847–1907) was a British novelist and journalist born in West Bromwich in 1847. He reported on the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 for The Daily News and The Times, an experience that provided material for his later writing. He then turned to fiction, authoring works such as Joseph's Coat, Aunt Rachel and My Contemporaries in Fiction; the collection holds 14 of his works, including The Making of a Novelist, a chronicle of the Crimea, Cruel Barbara Allen and In Direst Peril. His novels often draw on real-life observations and figures, with solid narration and attention to plot and character, while his critical and recollective writings are plain in style and possess documentary value. Public information is limited, and details of his life remain largely unknown. He died in London in 1907.