Melbourne House, Volume 2

Warner, Susan, 1819-1885Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.8
Word count
489K words
Chapters
49

Tags

English Originals Family EthicsFamily BondsSlow ReadingGrowing UpDaily ReflectionsTender SentimentLife WisdomMoral CultivationPopular NarrativeFemale Perspective

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.Melbourne House, Volume 2 by Susan WarnerAuthor: Warner, Susan, 1819-1885,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Jul 20, 2004

Editor's review

Volume 2 of Melbourne House is a sequel volume in Susan Warner's nineteenth-century children's literature, a public-domain text in the juvenile literature category. Warner's work is known for its focus on family life and character education; this volume continues the development of character relationships and everyday events at a leisurely pace, centring on details of speech and conduct and moral feeling rather than strong plot conflict. For today's readers its value lies first in being a specimen of nineteenth-century Anglo-American juvenile fiction, allowing observation of the didactic methods, family values and language style of children's reading matter of the time; and second as extensive reading material in English, with regular syntax and gentle plotting suited to piecemeal accumulation. Note that this is the second volume of a series; readers who have not read Volume 1 may feel disconnected from the character relationships. It is worth attending to how the author conveys value judgments through small everyday events, which is the key to understanding this kind of work.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read Volume 1 first or learn the earlier story before starting this volume; the character relationships will be clearer.
  2. Read chapter by chapter, reviewing after each the motives and consequences of the characters' words and actions.
  3. Note how family scenes and moral exhortation are written, keeping brief notes for comparison.
  4. English learners can closely read dialogue passages to appreciate everyday nineteenth-century usage.

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
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49

FAQ

Can I read this directly without having read Volume 1? You can, but this volume continues the characters and plot threads of the previous one, and starting directly may leave you disconnected from the relationships and earlier story. It is advisable to read Volume 1 first, or at least learn the main characters' backgrounds, before reading this volume for smoother comprehension.
Is this book suitable for children to read directly? It was originally nineteenth-century juvenile literature, but its language bears period features and its values differ from contemporary children's books. If giving it to contemporary children, an adult should read along and explain the background as needed; independent reading suits upper-primary readers with some English foundation.
What aspects are worth attending to while reading? Three points: how the author conveys character education through small everyday events, how family members' interactions reflect the social values of the time, and the period features of the narrative language. Reading with a comparative perspective lets you appreciate the work's value more than simply following the plot.

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About the author

Warner, Susan, 1819-1885 Author

Susan Warner (1819-1885) was a nineteenth-century American author known for inspirational coming-of-age fiction; her name and dates of birth and death appear in library catalog records. Public information about her is limited, and details of her life and education are difficult to establish with certainty, yet the library holds thirty-one of her works, which indicates a prolific and steady writing career. The Wide, Wide World is her best-known work, alongside Queechy, Diana, Nobody, Daisy, The End of a Coil, and Hills of the Shatemuc. Her fiction generally centers on young people's growth, family life, and moral trials, with a gentle and detailed style that emphasizes inner change and the formation of character. She found readers in the popular fiction market of her time and contributed to the later tradition of the coming-of-age novel.