The Son of a Maid

Strindberg, August, 1849-1912Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.4
Word count
713K words
Chapters
72

Tags

Foreign Language Books Foreign Literature Family of OriginFate and FortuneHumanistic CareComplex HumanityPsychological InsightGrowing UpSocial CritiqueMoral DilemmaAutobiographical19th Century

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.Der Sohn einer Magd by August StrindbergAuthor: Strindberg, August, 1849-1912,Language: German, Class: PT: Language and Literatures: Germanic, Scandinavian, and Icelandic literatures, Release Date: May 18, 2019

Editor's review

This is the German electronic edition of August Strindberg's autobiographical novel The Son of a Servant, released free of charge by Project Gutenberg. The work follows a boy's coming of age, depicting the struggles of someone of humble birth against family, school, and social prejudice, and carries a strong autobiographical stamp and self-scrutiny. Strindberg's prose is direct and emotionally intense, with sharp observations on class difference and the formation of personality; it is an important entry point for understanding the creative psychology of this Swedish author. The German edition serves as material for studying Strindberg's life and Nordic literature, and can also be read selectively by learners of German. Readers are advised to situate it against nineteenth-century Swedish society and to note the tension between subjective feeling and fact in the narrative. The electronic edition is easy to search, making it suitable for close reading and checking quotations.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Begin with the translator's or publisher's note to understand the work's place in Strindberg's autobiographical corpus.
  2. Take notes on character relationships chapter by chapter, distinguishing the narrator's subjective judgments from the events themselves.
  3. Read alongside material on nineteenth-century Swedish social class to understand the historical context of the protagonist's situation.
  4. German learners can close-read selected passages and build literary vocabulary with a dictionary.

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
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72

FAQ

Is this book a fictional novel or an autobiography by Strindberg? It is strongly autobiographical, drawing on the author's own upbringing and shaping it into literature. It should not be treated as strictly factual record; rather, attend to how the narrator processes and interprets personal experience.
Can I read this book without any German? The original is in German, so reading it without German is difficult. It is advisable first to consult a Chinese or English translation to grasp the content, then use the German edition for parallel reading or textual study.
What are the features of the Project Gutenberg edition? It is a free electronic edition, convenient for downloading, searching, and citation, but it generally lacks modern scholarly annotation and introduction. For in-depth study it should be used alongside relevant research materials.

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

Strindberg, August, 1849-1912 Author

August Strindberg (1849-1912) was a Swedish writer whose 57 works are held in this collection. His output spans novels and drama, with representative works including the novel The Red Room and plays such as Fräulein Julie, The Father, and The Road to Damascus, as well as the Plays by August Strindberg series and the autobiographical The Son of a Servant. His writing often deals with marriage, class, and relations between the sexes, and his style moved from naturalism toward expressionism and symbolism, leaving a lasting influence on modern theatre. The works here are mostly classified under inspirational growth. Public information is limited; the above is based only on in-house facts and widely accepted literary knowledge.