Lancashire Folk-lore

Wilkinson, Thomas Turner, -1874Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.0

Word count: 566K words
Chapters: 57

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.Lancashire Folk-lore by John Harland and Thomas Turner WilkinsonAuthor: Wilkinson, Thomas Turner, -1874,Language: English, Class: GR: Geography, Anthropology, Recreation: Folklore, Release Date: Oct 23, 2012

Editor's review

Compiled by John Harland and Thomas Turner Wilkinson, this book is a major collection documenting the folklore of Lancashire, England. It gathers local stories, customs, proverbs, and superstitions, preserving vivid details of nineteenth-century local life. As a primary source for folklore studies and local history, its value lies in presenting the belief world and oral traditions of ordinary people in the pre-industrial era, and it is helpful for understanding the diversity of regional culture in Britain. It need not be read for narrative continuity; it works better as a reference collection to dip into at random or to excerpt by theme (such as festivals, witchcraft, or omens). The original English carries period vocabulary and dialectal expressions, so reading it alongside notes or background materials is recommended to appreciate its flavor.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in British folklore and local legends
History enthusiasts studying nineteenth-century English social life
Writers and humanities researchers seeking regional folklore material

Not a good fit for

General fiction readers hoping for tightly plotted stories
Readers with weak English who struggle with nineteenth-century English expressions

Reading tips

Read by theme—festival customs, omens and superstitions, local stories—to allow for cross-comparison.
Make excerpt cards as you go, noting each entry's source and keywords for later reference and citation.
When encountering dialect or archaic expressions, consult reference works and note their usage in the original 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 suitable for reading from cover to cover?

Not really. It is closer to a compilation of materials, and the entries do not necessarily form a continuous narrative. It is best to read selectively by interest or organize the reading by theme, treating the book as a folklore archive to browse at any time rather than a story collection with a beginning, middle, and end.

What language level is needed to read this book?

The original is in English and contains nineteenth-century written language and local expressions, requiring intermediate or higher English reading ability. If you only want a general sense of the content, start with introductory materials, then choose entries of interest for close reading, and check dialect words in a dictionary.

Comments

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About the author

Wilkinson, Thomas Turner, -1874 Author

Thomas Turner Wilkinson (d. 1874) is the author of Lancashire Folk-lore. Public information about his life is very limited: his nationality, the year of his birth, his education, and his professional career cannot be reliably established, and only the year of his death, 1874, can be inferred from the attribution. What can be confirmed is that he left behind one work on the local folklore of Lancashire, England. The book records folk beliefs, customs, and oral traditions circulating in that region, and belongs to the kind of source compilation common in folklore studies and local history. Such writing focuses on collecting and preserving regional material and is generally addressed to readers and researchers interested in local culture. Because the relevant sources are scarce, it is currently difficult to assess further his writing style, scholarly standing, or later influence.