Holidays at Roselands

Finley, Martha, 1828-1909Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.5

Word count: 501K words
Chapters: 51

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. Holidays at Roselands by Martha Finley. Author: Finley, Martha, 1828-1909. Language: English. Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres. Release Date: Dec 6, 2004

Editor's review

Holidays at Roselands is one installment in Martha Finley's nineteenth-century children's literature series and belongs to juvenile literature. The story centers on holiday life at the Roselands estate and continues the author's characteristic themes of family ethics and moral growth, with emphasis on conduct, family affection, and everyday morality. As a public-domain ebook, it preserves the narrative pace and didactic tone of children's books of its time, and it has documentary value for readers studying nineteenth-century Anglo-American juvenile literature, family ideals, and children's educational reading. The reading highlights are the descriptions of estate life and the emotional interactions among characters, which give a direct sense of what was expected of children in that era. A caution: the work carries pronounced period moral instruction, the plot moves slowly, and modern readers may find the preaching heavy. It suits interest reading in the history of children's literature or English extensive reading; sampling chapters is enough to grasp its style, and there is no need to read it through.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers studying nineteenth-century children's literature and family reading
Readers who enjoy classic coming-of-age stories with a leisurely pace
Parents or teachers curious about older ideas of children's education
English learners doing extensive reading who prefer plain narrative

Not a good fit for

Modern fiction readers seeking strong plots and fast pacing
Readers averse to moralizing and a preachy tone
Readers needing systematic literary criticism or an author biography

Reading tips

Read the opening chapters first to get familiar with the characters and the estate, then decide whether to read through or sample.
Read it as a period text and note its codes of behavior and educational discourse.
For extensive reading, take one or two chapters a day; guess unfamiliar words first, then look them up, to keep the rhythm.
For research, note family scenes and dialogue for comparison with other works of the same period.

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 suitable for children to read directly?

Use caution. It is a nineteenth-century children's book, and its language and moral views bear clear marks of its time; some preaching and situations are distant from modern children's reading habits. Adult guidance or an adapted edition is recommended.

Do I need to read other books in the series first?

Not necessarily. The story centers on holidays at Roselands, and the character relationships are explained within this book, so it can be understood on its own; for fuller character background, other books in the series may be consulted.

How difficult is the English?

It is nineteenth-century English narrative, with longer sentences than modern works and fairly literary vocabulary, but the plot is plain and there is a good deal of dialogue. Readers at an intermediate level can manage with reference tools.

Comments

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About the author

Finley, Martha, 1828-1909 Author

Martha Finley (1828–1909) was an American author of children's literature, best known for her series fiction. Because public information is limited, the details of her life are difficult to set out, yet the 35 works by her held in this collection attest to the breadth of her output. She is most widely known for the Elsie Dinsmore series, whose representative titles include Elsie Dinsmore, Elsie at Nantucket, The Two Elsies, and Elsie at Viamede; these books center on the heroine Elsie's growth, family life, and moral choices, and carry a clearly didactic and sentimental tone. A second group, the Mildred series, including Mildred and Elsie and Mildred's New Daughter, continues in a similar vein. Written mainly for young readers, her works emphasize character education and family ethics, and are representative of American popular children's literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.