Poison Island

Quiller-Couch, Arthur, 1863-1944Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.5
Word count
471K words
Chapters
48

Tags

English Originals Mystery and Suspense Suspense ThrillerAdventure SuspenseTreasure HuntJianghu FeudIsland AdventureCriminal PsychologyFast-Paced PlotExotic CultureBritish SettingBoyhood Adventure

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.Poison Island by Arthur Quiller-CouchAuthor: Quiller-Couch, Arthur, 1863-1944,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Aug 27, 2005

Editor's review

Poison Island is by the English writer Arthur Quiller-Couch, both a novelist and a literary scholar whose works often carry a spirit of adventure and romance. Set on an island, the book unfolds with elements of seafaring adventure and suspense, suited to readers who enjoy traditional British adventure stories. The free electronic edition from Project Gutenberg preserves the original English text; its length and language style belong to the popular adventure tradition of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While reading, note how the author builds the island's sense of mystery and arranges suspense and character action, and consider comparing it with adventure novels of the same period to observe the genre's habitual plot devices. For English learners, it is usable material for encountering the vocabulary of classic adventure narrative; for researchers, it is a sample for examining the evolution of the popular adventure novel genre.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. First understand the island setting and the characters' relationships before entering the plot; this helps you grasp the suspense clues more quickly.
  2. Read the book alongside adventure novels of the same period to observe how genre devices such as islands, treasure, and pursuit are used.
  3. When reading the English original, don't look up every word; follow the plot first, then return to key passages.

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

FAQ

What kind of work is this book? It is a traditional British adventure and suspense novel set on an island, with elements of seafaring, exploration, and suspense. Its language and pacing reflect the popular adventure literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Can I read it without a Chinese translation? This is an English public-domain ebook released by Project Gutenberg, and the text is in English. Readers with some English reading ability can read it directly; those who prefer Chinese translations will need to find another edition or use辅助 tools.
Is it suitable for English learners? It can serve as English material for expanding genre reading, helping readers encounter common vocabulary and sentence patterns of adventure narrative. But as an older literary work, some expressions differ from modern English; it is best to focus on understanding the plot rather than reading word by word.

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About the author

Quiller-Couch, Arthur, 1863-1944 Author

Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863–1944) was an English writer with a substantial body of work, of which 41 titles are held in this collection. His writing covers a wide range: essays on the craft of reading and writing such as On the Art of Reading and On the Art of Writing, and narrative works set against the sea, winter, and the fireside, including The Roll-Call of the Reef, I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales, Two Sides of the Face: Midwinter Tales, and The Laird's Luck and Other Fireside Tales. He also retold fairy tales from the Old French in The Sleeping Beauty and other fairy tales from the Old French, and wrote From a Cornish Window, a book that reflects his attention to the Cornish landscape and local life. Public information is limited and biographical details are hard to verify, but the surviving works show a graceful, unhurried prose that combines the reflective habits of an essayist with a storyteller's pleasure in narrative, leaving its mark on English prose and short fiction.