Her Prairie Knight

Bower, B. M., 1871-1940Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
186K words
Chapters
19

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Social ObservationPortrait GalleryLove EntanglementsHeroismTender SentimentYouthful VibePopular NarrativeFemale Perspective

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. Her Prairie Knight by B. M. Bower. Author: Bower, B. M., 1871-1940. Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Sep 1, 1999

Editor's review

Her Prairie Knight is a Western novel by American author B. M. Bower, presented here in the original English as a free electronic edition from Project Gutenberg. Bower was known for writing about life in the American West, often setting her work against ranches, cowboys, and the routines of the prairie. This novel continues in her brisk, accessible storytelling style, with a plot centered on the fortunes and feelings of its characters in a Western setting. For Chinese readers, the value of the book lies mainly in its genre and regional culture: it can serve as a sample of early twentieth-century American popular Western fiction. The language is relatively plain and the book is not long, making it suitable as an introduction to or extensive reading in original English. The Gutenberg edition is easy to obtain and search, but it has no introduction or notes, so readers must grasp the historical background on their own. Overall, this is a light, easy-to-read Western story, suited to reading chapter by chapter in spare moments; readers should not expect deep literary experimentation or complex structure.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read a chapter or two first to gauge the language difficulty, then decide whether to read closely or extensively, and avoid looking up too many new words at the start.
  2. Make a separate list of words related to ranches, horses, and daily labor; this helps you enter the book's everyday setting.
  3. Read chapter by chapter and briefly note the relationships between characters; Western novels introduce many figures, and sorting them out makes reading smoother.
  4. You may read alongside a popular introduction to the history of the American West to understand the environmental background of the characters' actions.

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

FAQ

Is there a Chinese edition of this book? This Project Gutenberg edition is the original English text and contains no Chinese translation. Whether a Chinese edition is needed depends on the reader's English reading ability and purpose.
How difficult is the English? The language is generally plain, with a good deal of dialogue, in the popular-fiction style of the early twentieth century. Readers with basic English reading ability can try it; when encountering new words, it is best to guess their meaning first.
Is it suitable as English learning material? It is suitable for extensive reading: moderate in length, with a coherent plot that makes it easy to finish. It is not recommended as an intensive-reading textbook, however, because it lacks notes and some usage is old-fashioned.

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

Bower, B. M., 1871-1940 Author

Bower, B. M. (1871–1940) was an early American writer of Western fiction. Public information about her is limited, and Chinese-language sources record few details of her life. The library holds 30 of her works, including Chip, of the Flying U; Lonesome Land; The Gringos; The Phantom Herd; Sawtooth Ranch; The Flying U's Last Stand; Starr, of the Desert; and Good Indian. These titles show that she specialized in stories set on ranches and in the wilderness of the American West, dealing with cowboy life, ranch management, and personal conflicts. Her plots are brisk and her characters plainly drawn, in the manner of early popular Western fiction. The Flying U series is especially representative, centering on everyday ranch life and adventure in direct, fast-paced prose suited to a wide readership. Her work holds a place in early twentieth-century American popular literature and has had some influence on later Western writing.