Sagittulae, Random Verses

Bowling, Edward Woodley, 1837-1907Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.7

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.Sagittulae, Random Verses by Edward Woodley BowlingAuthor: Bowling, Edward Woodley, 1837-1907,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Mar 17, 2006

Editor's review

Sagittulae, Random Verses is a poetry collection by the English writer Edward Woodley Bowling (1837–1907), made available as a free e-book by Project Gutenberg. The title's "Sagittulae" means "little arrows," suggesting that these poems are short, casually composed, and have the light, essayistic quality of occasional verse. As a product of nineteenth-century English poetry, it is well suited to conveying the lyrical sensibility and metrical habits of Victorian literary circles, and can also serve as an introductory text for reading English poetry, showing how a short poem achieves its closure of image and emotion within a limited space. Since the original is in English and circulates as a Project Gutenberg e-book, the barrier to reading lies mainly in the language rather than the length. Readers are advised not to read it straight through, but to dip into it at random by table of contents, reading three to five poems at a time and paying attention to rhyme and rhythm; unfamiliar words can be skipped at first to preserve the overall impression. For those studying Project Gutenberg or nineteenth-century English literature, this little book also has reference value at the level of editions and texts.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who enjoy nineteenth-century English poetry and want short poems to dip into
English majors using it as extracurricular poetry reading and material for observing meter
Bibliophiles interested in Project Gutenberg and public-domain e-books

Not a good fit for

Readers who want a Chinese translation and are not comfortable with the English original
Readers expecting a systematic history of poetry or a textbook with detailed annotations
General readers who prefer novels or strongly narrative works

Reading tips

Dip into it at random by table of contents, reading three to five poems at a time; there is no need to read the whole book through.
Read aloud to feel the rhymes and rhythms of nineteenth-century English poetry.
Mark unfamiliar words and look them up later, so as not to interrupt the flow of reading.
After finishing, pick one or two poems that left the deepest impression and try retelling their imagery in your own 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

Is this book in Chinese or English?

The original is in English and belongs to English-language literature. Project Gutenberg provides the English electronic edition without a Chinese translation, so readers need some English reading ability.

What does "Sagittulae" mean?

It is Latin for "little arrows." Used as a title, it suggests short, occasional verses of a casual nature rather than pointing to a specific theme or narrative thread.

Can I read it without any background in poetry?

You can try. These short poems are limited in length and not especially difficult in language, making them suitable as introductory reading material for English poetry; if you are unfamiliar with meter and allusions, you can focus first on impressions and look up details later.

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About the author

Bowling, Edward Woodley, 1837-1907 Author

Edward Woodley Bowling (1837–1907) was an English writer about whom little is publicly known; the only work of his recorded here is Sagittulae, Random Verses. As the title suggests, it is a collection of miscellaneous poems bearing a Latin title, consisting mainly of occasional and informal verse and showing a clear taste for classical literature and improvised composition. In Bowling's Victorian era, English men of letters often had some grounding in Latin, and publishing a verse collection under a Latin title, mixing short and occasional poems, was a fairly common practice; his book belongs roughly to that tradition. Owing to the scarcity of records, his education, career and literary circle cannot be reliably established, and the collection does not appear to have circulated widely since. On present evidence, Bowling is known chiefly for this modest volume of miscellaneous verse, whose style is relaxed and casual, with something of the amateur literary diversion and social occasional piece about it; this is not enough to judge his standing or influence in the literary world of his day.