Boris the Bear-Hunter

Whishaw, Frederick, 1854-1934Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.5

Word count: 445K words
Chapters: 45

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.Boris the Bear-Hunter by Frederick WhishawAuthor: Whishaw, Frederick, 1854-1934,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Mar 9, 2014

Editor's review

Boris the Bear-Hunter is a full-length adventure novel for young readers by the English author Frederick Whishaw (1854–1934), presented here by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain eBook. It has the typical feel of nineteenth-century juvenile fiction: built around the experiences of Boris the bear-hunter, it lays out forest tracking, encounters between man and beast, and travel observations, with a brisk narrative pace and strong sense of scene—a suitable sample for understanding the adventure tradition in Victorian children's literature. Whishaw himself had a rich store of experience, and his descriptions of wild environments have real texture; readers can sense the roughness and directness peculiar to old-style adventure stories. As a public-domain electronic edition, the book is easy to obtain and fully searchable, suited to researchers comparing texts and to ordinary readers picking it up chapter by chapter in spare moments. It should be noted that the work was written over a century ago, and its treatment of hunting, nature, and foreign characters bears the marks of its time; today's readers would do well to view it through the lens of literary history rather than as a model for views of nature or culture.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Ordinary readers who enjoy nineteenth-century adventure novels for young readers
Students and teachers studying Victorian children's literature
Readers who need public-domain English texts as language-learning material

Not a good fit for

Readers of fiction who prefer modern pacing and complex character development
Readers sensitive to old-fashioned hunting descriptions and exotic stereotypes

Reading tips

Read the opening and closing chapters first to grasp the main line, then fill in the middle adventure sections as interest dictates.
Read alongside background material on Whishaw's life and nineteenth-century boys' magazines to understand the text's context.
Read the hunting scenes as literary-historical material, noting the narrator's value judgments and word choices.
Use the English original as extensive-reading material, jotting three to five new words and scene-description sentences per 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.

FAQ

Is this book suitable for English beginners?

Not very suitable for complete beginners. The text is nineteenth-century English with fairly long sentences, and some vocabulary is no longer in common use. Learners with a certain vocabulary who want to encounter old-style English narrative can try it, preferably with a dictionary and starting with the more plot-driven chapters.

Is this a complete story or an excerpt?

The Gutenberg edition is the complete electronic text of Whishaw's Boris the Bear-Hunter. The platform's purpose is to provide full public-domain eBooks, so readers can download or read the entire work online.

Are the hunting descriptions too bloody?

As a nineteenth-century adventure novel, it describes bear-hunting scenes fairly directly, but the overall tone leans toward the adventurous pleasures of juvenile reading rather than deliberately emphasizing bloodshed. Readers sensitive to animal subjects may wish to skim the relevant chapters before deciding whether to read the whole book.

Comments

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About the author

Whishaw, Frederick, 1854-1934 Author

Frederick Whishaw (1854–1934) was an author whose biographical details are limited in publicly available sources. Judging from his surviving works, he wrote mainly historical adventure novels and story collections for young readers. The Romance of the Woods is set against nature and the wilderness; Gunpowder Treason and Plot, and Other Stories for Boys collects tales for boys drawn from historical events; Moscow: A Story of the French Invasion of 1812 and Mazeppa draw on Napoleon's Russian campaign and Cossack history, while Boris the Bear-Hunter depicts the life of a Russian hunter. These works show his preference for historical settings and exotic subjects, with narratives that emphasize adventure and plot tension in an accessible, popular style. Five of his works are held in the collection, and he remains known chiefly for such historical adventure writing.