Little Nobody

Miller, Alex. McVeigh, Mrs., 1850-1937Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.7

Word count: 353K words
Chapters: 36

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.Little Nobody by Mrs. Alex. McVeigh MillerAuthor: Miller, Alex. McVeigh, Mrs., 1850-1937,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Sep 25, 2014

Editor's review

Little Nobody is a work by Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller, a late nineteenth-century American writer of popular fiction, made available as a free eBook by Project Gutenberg. Mrs. Miller was known for melodramatic domestic and sentimental narratives; the "little nobody" of the title points to a character of mysterious origin and lowly standing who ultimately proves central to everything—a setup typical of late Victorian popular fiction, with secrets of birth, mistaken identities and reunions, emotional trials, and reversals of fortune. For readers curious about what ordinary Americans were reading at the end of the nineteenth century, it offers a sample of popular taste that literary history tends to pass over; for English learners, the plain language and abundant dialogue make it suitable for extensive reading at length. Note that this is a public-domain eBook without a modern introduction or notes, and its plot conventions bear the clear stamp of its era; readers will do best to approach it as both a historical document and an entertainment.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Literary scholars interested in late nineteenth-century American popular fiction and the melodramatic tradition
Learners who want a plot-driven English original in plain prose for extensive reading practice
Readers who enjoy secrets of birth and reversals of fortune and can accommodate the pacing of old-fashioned storytelling
Enthusiasts studying Project Gutenberg's public-domain catalog and early electronic texts

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting the psychological depth or experimental narration of modern literary fiction
Beginners who need detailed notes, an introduction, or a scholarly edition
Readers who prefer contemporary pacing and have little patience for plots driven by coincidence

Reading tips

Read the opening chapters first to establish the relationships; list the main characters and the clues to their origins on paper before continuing.
Read the work in the context of late nineteenth-century popular publishing, noting the narrative work that misunderstanding and coincidence are doing.
English learners can read it extensively without looking up every word, focusing on dialogue and plot momentum.
After finishing, compare it with sentimental and domestic novels of the same period and note how typed its character setups are.

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 a complete novel?

Yes. It is a full-length novel by Mrs. McVeigh Miller, released by Project Gutenberg from a public-domain source text; it is the complete work, not an excerpt or a collection of fragments.

Will it be hard to read without an introduction or notes?

The author's prose is generally plain, dialogue makes up a large share of the text, and the plot moves directly, so ordinary readers can start right in. The main difficulty is the rapid laying out of period background and character relationships; keeping track of the characters as you go is advised.

Is it suitable as English-learning material?

It suits intermediate and advanced learners doing extensive reading at length. Sentence structures are not complex, but some vocabulary and phrasing carry late nineteenth-century marks; work through it chapter by chapter with a dictionary rather than reading sentence by sentence.

Why do coincidence and misunderstanding drive the plot so often?

This is a common narrative device of late nineteenth-century popular fiction, which relied on coincidence, misunderstanding, and revelations of birth to hold readers' interest. Understanding this genre convention is more useful than judging the book by the realism of modern fiction.

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About the author

Miller, Alex. McVeigh, Mrs., 1850-1937 Author

Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller (1850–1937) was an author of popular English-language fiction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, known by her married name and leaving behind a body of plot-driven novels. Because public information is limited, details of her life, nationality, and education remain difficult to establish with certainty; the library holds sixteen of her works. Titles such as The Senator's Bride and The Bride of the Tomb suggest that she specialized in suspenseful, emotionally charged popular narratives built around marriage, hidden identity, and revenge. Her heroines are often poor or otherwise disadvantaged, as in Little Nobody and Pretty Geraldine, the New York Salesgirl. Such fiction catered to a broad readership and bears the clear marks of the serial and inexpensive popular literature of its day; though not part of the classic canon, it offers a useful sample for studying women's writing in popular fiction.