Pelham — Volume 05

Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron, 1803-1873Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.2

Word count: 122K words
Chapters: 13

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. Pelham — Volume 05 by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton. Author: Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron, 1803-1873. Language: English. Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature. Release Date: Mar 1, 2005

Editor's review

This volume is the fifth of the six that make up Pelham; it stands at the transition from setup to resolution, advancing the central conflict and deepening the relationships among the characters. Bulwer-Lytton's narration moves between social scenes and suspense, continuing the earlier volumes' observation and satire of upper-class life while building toward the finale. As a public-domain electronic text released by Project Gutenberg, it preserves the serial-installment form of nineteenth-century fiction and is useful for studying serial rhythm and reader expectation. The volume stands alone only to a limited degree; its value lies chiefly in the larger chain of the work: readers can see how the author adjusts the balance of characters in the middle-to-late stretch and plants the threads that lead to closure. It suits readers already midway through the work, and English-literature students seeking an example of Victorian serial publication.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who have finished the first four volumes of Pelham and are ready for the closing stretch
Scholars of Victorian fiction interested in mid-to-late narrative pacing
Readers drawn to nineteenth-century English social satire and character portraits
Learners who need a public-domain English text for long-form reading practice

Not a good fit for

Readers new to the earlier volumes who hope to follow the story from this volume alone
Those who prefer short works or stand-alone books and are unused to serial form
Beginner English readers who need modern annotation and a systematic introduction

Reading tips

Briefly review the relationships from the first four volumes before reading, so the mid-course threads do not break.
Note characters who are new or newly emphasized here; they often bear on the ending.
Mark social dialogue and plot advancement separately to follow the author's two-stranded method.
Do not draw conclusions too soon after finishing; wait until the sixth volume to test whether the foreshadowing pays off.

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

Where does this volume stand in the novel as a whole?

It is the fifth of six volumes, a middle-to-late transitional part that advances the conflict and prepares for the final volume's resolution. It thus carries forward the groundwork of the first four volumes while building toward the ending, and read on its own it may seem to leave threads unresolved.

Should I start from Volume One and read in order?

Reading in order is recommended. In serial publication, character relationships and suspense accumulate layer by layer, and starting at Volume Five means losing the context. If time is short, at least read the preceding volume first to learn where the main characters currently stand.

How difficult is the original English?

The text is nineteenth-century English, with long sentences and period idiom in the social dialogue, and no modern annotation. Readers with college-level English can manage it with a dictionary, while beginners are better served by an abridged or annotated edition before returning to the original.

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

Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron, 1803-1873 Author

Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron Lytton (1803–1873) was an English novelist, playwright and politician. The library holds 220 of his works, spanning a wide range of subjects: the historical novel The Last Days of Pompeii, set against the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79; Rienzi, the Last of the Roman Tribunes, on the Roman tribune Cola di Rienzo; and Eugene Aram, a narrative drawn from a criminal case. He also wrote society novels such as Pelham, the family portrait The Caxtons, and the historical study Athens: Its Rise and Fall; the short tale The Haunted and the Haunters, or The House and the Brain reflects his interest in the supernatural. His style is ornate and his plots elaborate, combining romantic colouring with social satire. Public information is limited, and systematic Chinese-language appraisal of his life and work remains scarce.