Heart Songs

Blewett, Jean, 1862-1934Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.9

Word count: 208K words
Chapters: 21

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.Heart Songs by Jean BlewettAuthor: Blewett, Jean, 1862-1934,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Dec 28, 2016

Editor's review

This poetry collection is the work of the Canadian poet Jean Blewett. It is a public-domain literary resource, digitized and released by Project Gutenberg. Blewett's poems mostly draw on everyday life, family feeling, and the natural world; the language is plain and the rhythm unhurried, carrying the typical temper of English-language poetry from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. For readers who want to understand the early face of Canadian English literature, or who are interested in the late-Victorian tradition of sentimental lyric, this book offers a firsthand textual sample. The electronic edition is easy to search and excerpt, making it suitable as introductory poetry reading or as supplementary material for English literature courses. One caveat: this is a historical text, and some of its emotional expressions and gender assumptions bear clear marks of their time; readers would do well to read it with the eye of literary history rather than seeking contemporary resonance.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in the early development of Canadian English literature
Readers who enjoy late-nineteenth-century lyric poetry and prefer plain language
English majors using it as a public-domain literary text for close study
English readers who want short poems for fragmentary reading time

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking the experimentalism and complex technique of modern poetry
Readers who want a Chinese translation and are not comfortable with the English original
Readers with no interest in the sentimental lyric tradition

Reading tips

First read through the table of contents, pick the few titles that attract you most for a trial read, then decide whether to read the whole book.
Read one or two poems a day, aloud, to feel the rhythm of nineteenth-century English poetry.
When you meet unfamiliar words, first guess from context, and check them only after finishing the poem.
You may combine the poems with materials on Canadian literary history to understand them in their historical context.

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 in Chinese or English?

The original is in English, released as an electronic text by Project Gutenberg. The materials provided so far show no Chinese translation, so readers need some English reading ability.

Is it suitable as English-learning material?

It can serve as supplementary material. The poems are short and the language relatively plain, good for close reading and reading aloud, but some vocabulary and expressions bear the marks of their era; beginners should use it with notes or a dictionary.

What background knowledge is needed to read this book?

No special background is needed to read it. For deeper understanding, you might first learn about the general state of late-nineteenth-century Canadian English poetry and the common literary treatment of family, religion, and nature at the time.

What should I watch out for when reading the electronic edition?

Public-domain electronic texts may have simplified formatting or occasional character errors left from scanning; when reading, put understanding the meaning first; if quoting, it is advisable to check the original against other editions.

Comments

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About the author

Blewett, Jean, 1862-1934 Author · Canadian · 1862–1934

Jean Blewett (1862–1934) was a Canadian poet and journalist. Public information about her is limited, and many details of her life remain unknown, yet her surviving works still reveal the basic character of her writing. She published two collections of poetry, Heart Songs and The Cornflower, and Other Poems, both of which are held in this collection. Her poems draw chiefly on rural and family life, written in a plain and intimate tone that values the expression of everyday feeling and reflects a gentle style close to ordinary readers. This choice of subject gives her work a sense of lived experience within Canadian English poetry of her time, and leaves a modest record of how ordinary people of that era felt and lived.