In Brief Authority
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers who enjoy English humor and light satire and want an easy read
- Literature lovers interested in English society of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
- Readers who can read English originals and are willing to read a chapter at a time in leisure
- Researchers of the tradition of humorous fantasy who want to add Anstey's work to their reading
Not a good fit for
- Readers who prefer tight plotting, strong suspense, or fast-paced narrative
- Readers hoping for serious social critique or deep psychological portrayal
- Readers whose English is not yet proficient and who need a Chinese translation as support
Reading tips
- Read chapter by chapter, one or two at a time, letting the irony and comedy develop in the intervals.
- Pause briefly at passages involving titles and etiquette, noting the contrasts created by mismatched status.
- First get a sense of the humorous fantasy vein the author is known for, then enter the text; the style is easier to appreciate that way.
- If the English is difficult, read a plot summary first to grasp the main line, then go back to the dialogue-heavy chapters for close reading.
About the publisher
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
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
- 40
- 41
- 42
- 43
- 44
- 45
- 46
- 47
- 48
- 49
- 50
- 51
- 52
- 53
- 54
- 55
- 56
- 57
- 58
- 59
- 60
- 61
- 62
- 63
- 64
- 65
FAQ
Is this book serious literature or light comedy?
Do I need to know British history beforehand?
How difficult is the English original for Chinese readers?
Is this book suitable for reading in one sitting?
Comments
Find this book
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
F. Anstey (1856–1934) was a British writer known for humorous fantasy novels and satirical works. His best-known book, Vice Versa or, A Lesson to Fathers, tells the absurd story of a father and son who swap identities and became a pioneer of this kind of plot after its wide popularity; The Brass Bottle uses a genie released into the modern world to set off a series of comic conflicts. He also wrote novels such as In Brief Authority and The Tinted Venus: A Farcical Romance, short story collections including The Black Poodle, and Other Tales, and parodies of well-known Ibsen plays collected as Mr Punch's Pocket Ibsen. His works often use supernatural premises to poke gentle fun at Victorian social customs and family relations, in a light and witty tone. The library holds 18 of his works. Public information is limited, and this introduction is based mainly on his surviving works.
