Canterbury Pieces

Samuel ButlerProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
88K words
Chapters
9

Tags

English Originals Essays and Miscellany Social CritiqueIntellectual CommentarySatirical StyleEssays and SketchesSocial Observation

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.Canterbury Pieces by Samuel ButlerAuthor: Butler, Samuel, 1835-1902,Language: English, Class: QH: Science: Natural history, Release Date: Jun 1, 2002

Editor's review

Canterbury Pieces is a collection by Samuel Butler, a public-domain eBook released free by Project Gutenberg. It is classified under natural history, yet Butler's writing is known for its speculative, satirical, and interdisciplinary bent; these pieces show how he treated science and religion, tradition and doubt in literary form. It is not a systematic treatise but a gathering of fragmentary essays, best read as corroborating evidence of the Victorian intellectual climate. The electronic edition has no publisher's note or annotations, so readers must judge the textual background for themselves; the English original demands some language proficiency. Its value lies in presenting one thinker's unconventional habits of observation, suitable for casual reading by those interested in Victorian prose and the intersection of science and the humanities, and as study material for public-domain English texts.

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with the table of contents and opening pieces to gauge each theme, then choose by interest rather than reading straight through.
  2. Keep a notebook of the scientific and religious views raised, for cross-comparison.
  3. Read alongside Butler's other works to observe the continuity of his satirical manner and thought.
  4. Use the free Gutenberg edition on a tablet or computer with a dictionary at hand.

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 a novel or a collection of essays? From the available information, it is a collection of Butler's writings released by Project Gutenberg, classified toward texts on natural history rather than a full-length novel. The specific contents should be checked against the e-edition's table of contents; readers should treat it as prose and essays to be read piecemeal, not as a coherently plotted work of fiction.
Does the electronic edition include annotations and an introduction? Project Gutenberg public-domain eBooks generally provide only the text and basic metadata, without scholarly annotations or an introduction. When encountering historical figures, allusions, or scientific background, readers must look them up themselves; a reliable encyclopedia or background material is recommended.
How difficult is the English? Butler is a nineteenth-century English writer whose sentence structure and vocabulary bear Victorian characteristics; the pieces are short but intellectually dense, so this is not an entry-level English text. Readers with upper-intermediate to advanced English and a habit of reading public-domain classics will find it smoother going.

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About the author

Samuel Butler Author · British · 1835–1902

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) was a British novelist and essayist. Born into a clergyman's family in Nottinghamshire, he graduated from Cambridge University and later went to New Zealand to run a sheep station. He is known for the satirical utopian novel Erewhon and the posthumously published autobiographical novel The Way of All Flesh. The former uses an imaginary country as a mirror to critique Victorian education, religion, and morality, while the latter examines growth and family relations through a family narrative. He also wrote Erewhon Revisited, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, The Authoress of the Odyssey, and works on life, art, science, evolution, and memory, spanning fiction, essays, and intellectual commentary, often with an ironic and skeptical tone.