The Angel in the Cloud

Fuller, Edwin W. (Edwin Wiley), 1847-1876Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.1

Word count: 167K words
Chapters: 17

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.The Angel in the Cloud by Edwin W. FullerAuthor: Fuller, Edwin W. (Edwin Wiley), 1847-1876,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Jul 14, 2018

Editor's review

The Angel in the Cloud is a poetic work left by Edwin W. Fuller (1847–1876), prepared by Project Gutenberg as a free electronic text. Fuller died young and left few works; this piece is a small window into nineteenth-century American poetry. The Project Gutenberg edition faithfully preserves the original language and arrangement, making it light material for reading English poetry in the original. It is not a major classic, but its brevity and zero cost make it useful for comparing the linguistic tastes of contemporary American and Canadian literature, and as a sample of what Project Gutenberg includes. When reading, it is best to understand its imagery and meter against the broader background of nineteenth-century American poetry, without expecting a plot-driven narrative. For general readers, it is more like a small book to flip through at leisure, suitable for reading a few pages in spare moments and sensing the lyrical tone and the religious and natural imagery of the era.

Who it's for

A good fit for

English learners who want to encounter nineteenth-century American poetry in the original
Researchers interested in the textual form of Project Gutenberg ebooks
Teachers who need short English poems for class or recitation
Readers who prefer classical lyrical style and enjoy browsing poetry at leisure

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting a full plot narrative or a novel-like reading experience
Readers who only want a Chinese translation and are not used to English originals
Researchers who need extensive author biography and background annotations

Reading tips

Read through once to grasp the overall tone, then look up unfamiliar words and allusions section by section to avoid too many interruptions.
Read alongside an anthology of nineteenth-century American poetry to understand the shared imagery of contemporary poets.
Try reading aloud to experience the meter and rhyme through sound, making up for what silent reading misses in rhythm.

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 a novel or poetry?

According to Project Gutenberg, this is a literary work by Edwin W. Fuller in the American and Canadian literature category. Its length and form are close to poetry, so it should not be approached as a long novel; read it with attention to poetic rhythm and imagery.

Why is there so little information about the author?

Fuller was born in 1847 and died in 1876 at only twenty-nine, leaving limited works and biographical material. The Project Gutenberg edition mainly provides the original text without detailed biographical research; readers who need deeper background should consult literary histories and biographies separately.

What should I watch out for when reading the electronic edition?

The Project Gutenberg edition is a free electronic text that preserves the original English and its arrangement. Different reading software may display line breaks and indentation differently; when reading poetry, choose a format that preserves the original layout so as not to affect judgment of the line structure.

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About the author

Fuller, Edwin W. (Edwin Wiley), 1847-1876 Author

Edwin W. Fuller (1847–1876) was an English-language writer who died young; public information about his life and nationality is limited. What can be confirmed is that he left two works, the novel Sea-gift: A Novel and The Angel in the Cloud. Judging from their titles and genres, his writing ranged across fiction and narrative touched with fantasy or allegory, leaning toward lyricism and imagination; though modest in scale, the works show care for emotional atmosphere and imagery. Sea-gift takes the sea as its central image, suggesting a story possibly built around voyaging, parting, or fate, while The Angel in the Cloud carries clear metaphorical weight, tending to use light imagery to convey moral or spiritual themes. Given the scarcity of sources, the full shape of his output and his literary standing remain difficult to assess in detail, and the two works survive chiefly as fragments of nineteenth-century English popular narrative for later readers and researchers.