Lady Kilpatrick

Buchanan, Robert Williams, 1841-1901Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.1

Word count: 226K words
Chapters: 23

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.Lady Kilpatrick by Robert Williams BuchananAuthor: Buchanan, Robert Williams, 1841-1901,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Aug 11, 2017

Editor's review

Lady Kilpatrick is a novel by the nineteenth-century British writer Robert Williams Buchanan, a work within the tradition of Victorian English literature. Buchanan was known for poetry, fiction, and drama criticism, and his novels often feature strong plotting and marked turns in his characters' fortunes; this book also lets readers observe how popular fiction of the period handled themes of emotion, marriage, and class. As a public-domain eBook from Project Gutenberg, it offers low-cost access to one facet of Victorian fiction, suitable for readers of literary history seeking to broaden their reading or as a corpus of nineteenth-century English prose. Readers should attend to narrative perspective and period context, and need not judge it by the pacing standards of modern fiction. The key to understanding lies in the characters' relationships and the unfolding of the plot.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Literature lovers interested in Victorian British fiction
Students studying nineteenth-century English popular fiction and narrative technique
Readers seeking to expand their reading of English originals through public-domain eBooks
Readers who enjoy stories of characters' fates and emotional entanglement

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer contemporary fast-paced, suspense-driven genre fiction
Beginners with limited experience reading English originals who need annotated support
Those who only want to read literary theory and have no interest in the primary text

Reading tips

First learn about Victorian social context and the publishing forms of fiction, which makes it easier to grasp characters' motives when entering the text.
Note the narrator's tone and the period diction in characters' dialogue; jot down unfamiliar words and look them up after finishing the chapter.
Read alongside other Victorian novels to compare different treatments of emotion and marriage.
After finishing, outline the main characters' relationships and plot turns in brief notes to consolidate understanding.

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 beginners reading English originals?

Not really as a first English original. It is a nineteenth-century English novel whose sentence patterns and vocabulary carry period features and require some reading foundation. If you already have experience with a few English novels, reading it with a dictionary and background materials will go more smoothly.

Do I need to know about the author Buchanan to read this book?

Prior in-depth study is not necessary, but knowing he was a nineteenth-century British writer who also wrote poetry and criticism helps in understanding the period style. Focusing on character relationships, narrative perspective, and plot development is more effective than dwelling on the author's biography.

Any practical advice for reading the electronic edition?

Use the search function to look back at names and key plot points and avoid confusion over character relationships; read in sections and keep a character list as you go. For long sentences, first grasp the main structure and then fill in modifiers; review your notes after each chapter for firmer understanding.

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

Buchanan, Robert Williams, 1841-1901 Author

Robert Williams Buchanan (1841–1901) was a nineteenth-century British writer best known for his fiction. Public information about him is limited, and the details of his life are difficult to verify, but the eleven works held in the collection show that he excelled at long-form narrative, often dealing with social realities and emotional entanglements. Representative works such as The Martyrdom of Madeline and Lady Kilpatrick display his careful portrayal of his characters' fates; Foxglove Manor, published in three volumes, follows the multi-volume novel format common in the Victorian era; and The New Abelard: A Romance uses a legendary framework to explore emotion and ethics. Saint Abe and His Seven Wives and Matt: A Story of A Caravan differ in subject, reflecting the range of his writing. His prose is plain and his plotting unhurried, making his work a useful reference for the study of Victorian popular fiction.