Nothing to Eat

Thomas Chandler HaliburtonProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.3

Word count: 41K words
Chapters: 5

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.Nothing to Eat by Jr. Horatio Alger and Thomas Chandler HaliburtonAuthor: Haliburton, Thomas Chandler, 1796-1865,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Jun 1, 2004

Editor's review

Nothing to Eat is associated in the materials with both Horatio Alger Jr. and Thomas Chandler Haliburton, and that pairing itself points to traditions of popular narrative and satirical humor. Haliburton was known for his colonial New England characters and dialect humor, while Alger often wrote of boys' striving and reversals of fortune; where the two meet, the work likely carries plot-driven action, exaggerated characters, and worldly banter. It does not aim at deep literary experiment, and is better read as a sample of the tastes of nineteenth-century North American popular reading. Attend to dialogue, the comic handling of hard circumstances, and narrative pace rather than expecting a serious work of social history. As a public-domain eBook, it is relatively approachable in length and difficulty—good for reading in stretches on a commute or before bed, and a light supplement for readers interested in early American humor and popular fiction.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who enjoy nineteenth-century British and American popular fiction and humorous stories
Readers interested in Alger-style striving narratives or Haliburton's humor
Those who need light public-domain English texts for extensive reading
Literature lovers curious about early North American worldly satire

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting deep social critique or serious historical analysis
Readers who read only contemporary Chinese fiction and are unused to old-fashioned English
Specialists needing full author biographies and a chronology of works

Reading tips

Read the opening chapters first to judge whether the narrative centers on character or situation, then decide between close and extensive reading.
Mark exaggerated dialogue and dialect passages separately; afterward review how the humor drives the plot.
Read alongside other Alger stories of boys' striving to observe common patterns of popular narrative.
For English extensive reading, fix one chapter per session: summarize the gist first, then deal with unfamiliar 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.

FAQ

Who actually wrote this book?

The materials associate it with Horatio Alger Jr. and Thomas Chandler Haliburton, the latter living from 1796 to 1865. The eBook's attribution may be complex; rely on the title page and preface rather than simply assigning it to a single author.

Is the story about hunger, or is it a metaphor?

The title Nothing to Eat readily suggests a lack of food, but nineteenth-century popular stories often use hard circumstances to create comedy and turns of plot. The actual plot must be confirmed from the text; do not judge it a documentary of famine from the title alone.

Is it suitable for beginners to read the English original directly?

With basic English reading ability, one can attempt extensive reading, but old-fashioned syntax and dialect may get in the way. Try one chapter first, focusing on understanding characters and events rather than translating sentence by sentence.

Do I need to know American history first?

Not necessarily, though familiarity with the moral instruction and humor of nineteenth-century North American popular reading helps. For entertainment, read the story directly; to understand the satire's targets, look up Haliburton's background as you go.

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

Thomas Chandler Haliburton Author · Canadian · 1796–1865

Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796–1865) was a Canadian writer, judge and politician, born in Windsor, Nova Scotia. He created the classic figure of Sam Slick, a shrewd New England clock peddler; his best-known work, The Clockmaker, was Canada's first international bestseller. Seven of his works are held here, including the Attaché series, Nature and Human Nature and Nothing to Eat. His writing is known for its satirical humour, using Sam Slick's voice to mock the social manners and colonial life of his day. In later life he moved to Britain and served as a Member of the House of Commons until his death. Public information on his early education and family background is limited, so this profile makes no conjecture about them.