The Cobbler In The Devil's Kitchen

Catherwood, Mary Hartwell, 1847-1902Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.0

Word count: 27K words
Chapters: 3

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 Cobbler In The Devil's Kitchen by Mary Hartwell CatherwoodAuthor: Catherwood, Mary Hartwell, 1847-1902,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Oct 30, 2007

Editor's review

Also from Project Gutenberg and classified under American and Canadian literature, this is another narrative work by Catherwood. The title's "Devil's Kitchen" and "Cobbler" suggest a setting tinged with folklore, and the overall style leans toward local stories and character sketches. Catherwood excels at outlining community life and ordinary people's circumstances with concise strokes, and this piece, within its limited length, conveys a certain suspense and local flavor. The electronic edition is free and easily available, making it a suitable sample for understanding late nineteenth-century American short narrative and a light literary read for English readers. Being an original-language and short work, the reading threshold is low, though those expecting a full-length plot or modern novel pacing may find it thin. It is best regarded as a small window; read alongside the author's other works to better appreciate its narrative appeal.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who enjoy folklore-inflected and local stories
Readers who want to sample English short fiction in fragmented time
Beginners interested in American local-color literature
Writers seeking short examples to study narrative technique

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking full-length plots and complex character arcs
Readers uncomfortable with English originals who prefer to read directly in Chinese
Those uninterested in folklore or local themes

Reading tips

Read the title and opening first, guess what the "Devil's Kitchen" refers to, and continue with that suspense.
After finishing, retell the plot to check whether you have grasped character motives and scene transitions.
Read alongside other short works by the same author to compare shared techniques of local narrative and character sketching.

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 the "Devil's Kitchen" in the title a real place?

From the available information, it is an image in the work's title, and its specific referent must be sought in the text. It is more likely a setting named with a folklore flavor than a direct record of a real place; while reading, note how the text uses this image to build atmosphere.

Is this work long?

Judging from its inclusion in Project Gutenberg and its genre, it is a short narrative, not long, suitable for reading in one or two sittings. Exact page count varies with electronic formatting, but the overall reading burden is light.

Do I need to know the author before reading?

Not necessarily. The work can be read independently. For deeper understanding, a brief awareness that Catherwood excels at historical and local subjects helps in understanding the text's attention to community life and people's circumstances, but it does not affect basic reading.

Comments

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About the author

Catherwood, Mary Hartwell, 1847-1902 Author

Catherwood, Mary Hartwell (1847-1902) was a nineteenth-century American writer whose life and biographical details are only sparsely recorded in publicly available sources. Nineteen of her works are held in this collection, most of them drawing on early North American history and frontier life, especially the French colonial period in the Great Lakes region. Her representative works include historical novels such as Lazarre, The Romance of Dollard, and The Story of Tonty, as well as story collections such as Mackinac and Lake Stories, The Skeleton On Round Island, and The Indian On The Trail, along with pieces such as The Mothers Of Honoré and A British Islander. Her writing often draws on historical events and local legends, with a romantic tone that emphasizes atmosphere and the intertwining of character and fate, offering later readers a literary window into the history and folk narratives of the Great Lakes region.