Once to Every Man

Larry Evans (Lawrence Edward Evans)Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.2
Word count
405K words
Chapters
41

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Key ChoicesFateful ChoiceHumanity TestLife PhilosophyInner StruggleMoral DilemmaDramatic Conflict

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.Once to Every Man by Larry EvansAuthor: Evans, Larry, -1925,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Aug 9, 2009

Editor's review

"Once to Every Man" is a novel by the American writer Larry Evans, classified under American and Canadian literature. Judging by the title, the work carries a sense of moral choice, suggesting that the characters face a once-in-a-lifetime decision at a critical moment. Evans was born in the late 19th century and died in 1925; his writing belongs to the tradition of popular fiction and newspaper serial literature of the time. Reissued as a public-domain ebook, the book offers an accessible text for readers studying early American popular literature. In reading such works, one may focus on plot and characterization, and also place them back in the social and publishing environment of early 20th-century America to observe how popular literature discussed responsibility, courage, and personal choice. Since the available material provides only bibliographic information, readers should rely mainly on close reading of the text and need not presuppose its place in literary history; reading it as a period piece may in fact better convey its appeal.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. First read the whole book to grasp the main thread, then go back and sort out the characters' choices and motives at key moments.
  2. While reading, note clues to the period background, such as social customs, occupations, and family values, and keep notes on the historical context.
  3. Read it alongside other early 20th-century American popular novels to observe similarities and differences in subject matter and narrative technique.

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

FAQ

What kind of novel is this book? The available material identifies it only as belonging to American and Canadian literature and gives no specific plot or genre description. Judging by the title and the author's era, it may be a popular novel with a theme of moral choice, but one should not conclude from this what the specific plot is. Reading the text directly is recommended for confirmation.
What background does the author Larry Evans have? The material shows that his birth year is unknown and that he died in 1925; no other details of his life are provided. What can be established is that he was an American writer of the early 20th century. For a detailed biography, one should consult specialized literary biographies or bibliographic sources; this book itself provides no biographical information about the author.
What is the reading experience of the public-domain ebook edition like? Public-domain ebooks are easy to obtain free of charge and to search in full text, making them suitable for extensive reading and textual analysis. However, typesetting and proofreading quality vary by edition, and annotations and introductions may be lacking. For research purposes, it is advisable to check the text against other editions.

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

Larry Evans (Lawrence Edward Evans) Author · American

Larry Evans (born Lawrence Edward Evans) was an American novelist and playwright who died in 1925. Public information about him is limited, and many details of his life are difficult to verify. His novels and short stories appeared mostly in popular magazines such as Cosmopolitan, and his representative works include Then I'll Come Back to You, Once to Every Man, and Winner Take All. These works show that he was skilled at plot-driven popular storytelling, with characters' predicaments and emotional conflicts presented in a direct and accessible way, well suited to magazine serialization and to the screen; several of his works were therefore adapted into silent films. He suffered from tuberculosis for many years and died in Tucson, Arizona, in May 1925.