Bella Donna: A Novel
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers with good English reading ability who want to read original English texts
- Readers interested in early twentieth-century British popular fiction and women's themes
- English learners who need a free long-form English text for extensive reading practice
- Readers who enjoy melodramatic narrative and are drawn to characters' emotional entanglements
Not a good fit for
- Readers with weak English foundations who need annotations or a Chinese translation as support
- Readers who prefer modern, tightly paced narrative and lack patience for old-fashioned prose
- Readers expecting scholarly introductions and author research materials
Reading tips
- Read the first few chapters first to judge the style and pace, then decide whether to read closely or skim quickly.
- Keep track of the main characters' motives and changing relationships to help follow the melodramatic turns.
- When encountering period language, first guess from context, then check it in a batch, to avoid frequent interruptions.
- Read it alongside contemporaneous British novels about women to observe similarities and differences in characterization.
About the publisher
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
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FAQ
Is Bella Donna the original English version?
Does this book have modern annotations or an introduction?
Is this book suitable for English learners to practice reading?
Do I need to know about the author before reading this book?
Comments
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About the author
Robert Hichens (1864–1950) was a British novelist, with 28 of his works held in this collection. Public information about him is limited, and details of his life are difficult to verify, but his writings offer a sense of his literary range. His best-known novel, The Garden of Allah, is set against an exotic desert landscape and blends romance with religious reflection; The Green Carnation became known for its thinly veiled portrayal of Oscar Wilde and the aestheticist circle around him. He also wrote novels such as The Woman with the Fan, The Dweller on the Threshold, Bella Donna, The Figure in the Mirage and The Call of the Blood, as well as a travel book on the Near East, The Near East: Dalmatia, Greece and Constantinople. His work often draws on foreign settings, social manners and psychological suspense, with carefully developed plots that combine popular readability with the tastes of their time, earning him a place in early twentieth-century British popular fiction.
