Malbone: An Oldport Romance

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 1823-1911Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.0

Word count: 263K words
Chapters: 27

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.Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth HigginsonAuthor: Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 1823-1911,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Jul 1, 1997

Editor's review

Malbone: An Oldport Romance is a novel by the 19th-century American writer Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Set in a New England seaside town, it unfolds a story in which love and morality are intertwined. Higginson himself was an abolitionist, soldier and man of letters who moved in the circle of Thoreau and Emerson, and his prose bears the imprint of the Transcendentalist era. The book's value lies in its depiction of American local customs and old-fashioned social ethics; both the dialogue and the psychological description show considerable skill, and it is a useful reference for readers studying 19th-century American fiction or local color writing. Readers should note that the novel moves at a slow pace and that its narrative manner differs greatly from modern works; it is better read closely in a quiet setting. As a public-domain e-book, it is easy to obtain, and it suits lovers of literary history and English learners as supplementary reading.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers studying 19th-century American literature and regional fiction
Literature lovers who enjoy period narrative and psychological portrayal of character
Advanced language learners hoping to expand their reading of English originals
Readers interested in the cultural background of the American Transcendentalist era

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking fast-paced plots and strong dramatic conflict
Beginners with weak English who need modern annotation and assistance
Readers impatient with old-fashioned long sentences and slow buildup

Reading tips

Read the preface first or learn about Higginson's life; this helps in understanding the novel's period background.
Advance at a pace of one or two chapters a day, noting character relationships and key scenes as you read.
Consult material on the social customs of 19th-century New England to understand the characters' motives.
Mark unfamiliar expressions and look them up later, so that frequent pauses do not break the flow of reading.

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 English beginners?

Not really. The novel was written in the 19th century, with long sentences and wording that is distant from modern English, and it lacks notes and a vocabulary list. Readers with a weak foundation in English may lose interest amid long sentences and old-fashioned expressions; it is better to gain some experience reading originals first.

What genre does the novel belong to?

Judging by its title and content, it is a regional novel centered on love and social ethics, with the moral reflection and psychological characterization common in 19th-century American literature, rather than a work of adventure or suspense.

What are the features of this edition?

This is the public-domain e-book edition provided by Project Gutenberg, easy to obtain free of charge and to read on electronic devices. It is a public-copyright text and usually has no modern introduction or detailed notes, so readers need to supply the background knowledge themselves.

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

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 1823-1911 Author

Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823–1911) was an American writer, abolitionist and soldier, with ten works held in this collection. His writing ranges widely across history, military life, literary biography, essays and fiction: Black Rebellion: Five Slave Revolts recounts slave uprisings, while Army Life in a Black Regiment draws on his own experience leading a Black regiment; both are closely tied to the history of American abolition and the Civil War. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is a life of the poet, A Book of American Explorers and Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic turn to exploration history and Atlantic island legends, and Malbone: An Oldport Romance, Oldport Days and Women and the Alphabet: A Series of Essays offer, respectively, a novel of manners, seaside sketches and essays on women and education. His style is plain and clear, combining a historian's rigor with an essayist's ease. Because the available material is limited, a detailed account of his life cannot be given here.