My American Diary

Sheridan, Clare, 1885-1970Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
466K words
Chapters
47

Tags

English Originals Documentary Literature Human GeographyUrban VignettesPortrait GalleryDaily ReflectionsTravel GuideDocumentary NarrativeExotic CultureSocial ObservationCross-Cultural ViewFemale 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.My American Diary by Clare SheridanAuthor: Sheridan, Clare, 1885-1970,Language: English, Class: E151: History: America: United States, Release Date: Mar 15, 2019

Editor's review

This diary-form work records its author Clare Sheridan's experiences and observations in America, a personal text of early twentieth-century transatlantic cultural exchange. Its value lies not in systematic historical argument but in a first-person view of an outsider's immediate impressions of American society, customs and manners, preserving a sense of immediacy and a private voice. The Project Gutenberg edition offers the original English text, giving readers direct access to the original wording and period feel. Read it as a hybrid between historical source and literature: note how the author describes particular scenes, and observe how her judgments and prejudices take shape. Suitable for readers interested in travel writing, diary literature and fragments of American social history to dip into in spare moments, and as light reading material in the original English. A caveat: this is not a textbook of American history; the information is scattered and subjective, and should be read with a critical eye.

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Reading tips

  1. Read in diary-date order and note shifts in the author's viewpoint and mood.
  2. Keep a notebook of striking scenes and judgments; revisit your own critical reading afterwards.
  3. Read alongside other American travelogues to compare what different outsiders notice.
  4. If English reading is hard, first read each passage for gist, then go back to look up key words.

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

FAQ

Is this the original English edition, and is it hard to read? This Project Gutenberg edition is the original English text, written in early twentieth-century written English: the sentences are not complex but the vocabulary is of its period. Readers with intermediate English can finish it with a dictionary; beginners should try a few passages first.
Can the diary be cited as American historical material? It can be used as first-hand impression material from a personal viewpoint, but it is not systematic historiography; the information is scattered and carries the author's subjective judgments. When citing it, note its diary genre and private nature, and corroborate it with formal historical sources.
How is the e-book reading experience, and is it suitable for printing? The Project Gutenberg edition is a plain-text e-book with simple layout, suitable for reading on electronic devices and easy to print and bind. As it has no modern notes or introduction, readers should supply background material themselves.

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About the author

Sheridan, Clare, 1885-1970 Author

Clare Sheridan (1885–1970) was a British sculptor and writer active in the artistic and cultural circles of Europe and America from the early to mid-twentieth century, whose life and work spanned both art and literature. Two of her books are available here: the travelogue My American Diary and the portrait collection Russian Portraits. The former records her observations in America in diary form, in a direct and highly personal style; the latter grew out of her 1920 visit to Soviet Russia, where she made busts of several revolutionary leaders, and sketches people through both words and images, combining artistic observation with a sense of historical immediacy. Both works carry a strong personal perspective, written in a light, perceptive manner and attentive to everyday details and character rather than systematic argument. Public information is limited, and her writing is often regarded as a companion to her career as a sculptor and as a record of her times, holding some reference value for art history and travel literature.