Concerning Bully Hayes

Becke, Louis, 1855-1913Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.2

Word count: 77K words
Chapters: 8

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.Concerning "Bully" Hayes by Louis BeckeAuthor: Becke, Louis, 1855-1913,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Apr 5, 2008

Editor's review

This is Louis Becke's short piece on the notorious South Seas figure "Bully" Hayes, concise in length and marked by a blend of firsthand hearsay and period lore. Becke spent years moving among Pacific islands, and his account has both a sailor's concreteness and the strong 19th-century popular interest in adventurous characters. Readers can see how a much-repeated seafaring figure was shaped, and sense how the English-speaking world then imagined the South Pacific. The prose is old-fashioned and information-dense, useful as supplementary material for colonial Pacific history or maritime literature. It is not a full biographical study but a personal sketch, best read with a critical eye that separates anecdote from verifiable fact.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in South Pacific historical figures and maritime anecdotes
Literature enthusiasts studying 19th-century English writing on the Pacific
Readers who enjoy short character sketches over long plots
English learners seeking public-domain English materials for topical reading

Not a good fit for

Historians seeking rigorous scholarly biographies with annotations
Beginner English readers with limited patience for old-fashioned prose
Casual readers expecting a complete adventure narrative

Reading tips

Learn a little about 19th-century South Pacific trade and colonial history first for smoother reading.
Mark hearsay in the narrative and keep it distinct from reliable historical sources.
Read alongside Becke's other Pacific stories to observe how the same figure shifts across tellings.
It is short enough to finish in one sitting, then revisit key passages for notes.

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

Was "Bully" Hayes a real historical figure?

Judging from the title and Becke's usual Pacific subjects, Hayes was a much-talked-about seafaring figure in the South Pacific of the time, and Becke's text is memoir and hearsay. Read it as a period character sketch; for strict historical judgment, compare independent sources and do not treat every anecdote as confirmed.

Is this text suitable for citation as historical material?

It works better as literary and period narrative than as rigorous historical citation. It likely contains rumor, personal impression, and popularized phrasing. In academic writing, cite it only as evidence of how contemporaries told the story, and cross-check with archives and period newspapers.

What if the original English is hard to read?

Read through once for the gist without looking up every word; handle long sentences and old-fashioned expressions on the second pass. Mark names of people, ships, and places, then check them afterward. If still difficult, warm up with shorter passages by the same author before returning to this piece.

Comments

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About the author

Becke, Louis, 1855-1913 Author

Louis Becke (1855–1913) was an English-language writer active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; details of his life and nationality are limited in publicly available sources. The library holds thirty-eight of his works, including novels and short-story collections, mostly concerned with seafaring, island life and adventure. Representative titles include By Reef and Palm, Rídan The Devil And Other Stories, Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories, The Trader's Wife, Yorke The Adventurer and Tessa. His writing is often set against the backdrop of Pacific islands and maritime experience, with a realistic tone that portrays sailors, traders and islanders in foreign settings and the human nature they reveal, giving his work a distinct flavour of sea adventure. The library classifies his works under inspirational growth; his books retain a readership within the tradition of maritime adventure fiction, though overall scholarly material on him remains limited.