London Films cover

London Films

Rating 3.0
Word count
411K words
Chapters
42

Tags

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.London Films by William Dean HowellsAuthor: Howells, William Dean, 1837-1920,Language: English, Class: DA: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Great Britain, Ireland, Central Europe, Release Date: Dec 1, 2004

Editor's review

This book is a set of essayistic "films" written from William Dean Howells's observations during a stay in London, a public-domain collection of prose. With a novelist's eye the author captures the city's everyday life: street scenes, people, customs and public life, in a gentle tone and with rich detail, so that reading feels like strolling through London with an experienced observer. It is not a systematic local history or travel guide but a cultural sketch with personal flair, suitable for dipping into in spare moments and as a sample of the English and American literary essay style from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For writers of English prose, its handling of scene and character sketches offers much to learn from. Read it slowly, as a model of urban observation and essay writing.

Who it's for

A good fit for

  • Readers who enjoy urban essays and English and American prose
  • Travel-literature lovers who want to learn about everyday London culture
  • Readers learning English prose writing who need examples
  • Readers who prefer short pieces they can put down at any time

Not a good fit for

  • Readers who need practical London travel information
  • Readers who prefer strongly plotted novels or systematic histories
  • Readers expecting deep social critique and theoretical analysis

Reading tips

  1. Read at random by piece, one or two at a time, noting how the author uses detail to write about people and scenes.
  2. After reading, imitate a passage by writing an observation of your own city's streets to practice scene sketches.
  3. Read alongside a map of London or historical photographs to strengthen the sense of space and period.
  4. English learners can excerpt descriptive sentences and compile common vocabulary for urban observation.

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.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a travelogue?
It is neither a novel nor a practical travelogue, but a collection of essays based on the author's experiences during a stay in London, focusing on urban observation and character sketches.
Can it serve as a London travel guide?
No. The book lacks practical information such as transport and accommodation; it is better read as cultural background before a trip, to help understand the city's everyday character.
How difficult is the English?
It is literary prose with unhurried sentences and fairly formal vocabulary; readers with some English foundation will find it smoother, and beginners can start with excerpts and annotations.

Comments

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About the author

William Dean Howells (1837–1920) was an American author and literary editor, with 107 works held in the collection. His writing spans novels, travel books, memoirs, and literary essays, and his representative works include My Mark Twain, Indian Summer, A Boy's Town, A Modern Instance, and A Hazard of New Fortunes. Howells drew on close observation of everyday life, writing in a plain style with gentle irony and attending to moral questions and human situations amid social change; his travel book Venetian Life and his memoir Literary Friends and Acquaintance record his journeys and personal recollections of American literary figures. Public information is limited, so biographical details are not elaborated here; readers may turn to the works above to learn about his subjects and style.