The Dusantes

Stockton, Frank Richard, 1834-1902Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.1
Word count
176K words
Chapters
18

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Fate and FortuneLove EntanglementsHuman NaturePsychological InsightSlow ReadingHeartwarming Narrative

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 Dusantes by Frank Richard StocktonAuthor: Stockton, Frank Richard, 1834-1902,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Mar 4, 2011

Editor's review

The Dusantes is by the American writer Frank Richard Stockton, who is classified under US and Canadian literature and whose works are known for their light conceits and faintly absurd situations. The book is short and briskly paced, a good sample of late nineteenth-century American popular fiction. Its pleasure lies not in complex character arcs but in how the author handles an ingenious premise and builds suspense and humor from everyday detail. Readers familiar with Stockton's short stories, such as The Lady, or the Tiger?, will find this fills out their sense of his narrative wit; newcomers should treat it as a light literary sketch rather than a heavy classic. As a Project Gutenberg electronic text, it is essentially the public-domain original without modern annotation, so readers must attend to period context and vocabulary on their own. Overall it is a piece in the puzzle of literary history, best savored at leisure for its structural ingenuity.

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Reading tips

  1. Read it through in one sitting to grasp the ingenuity of the plot, then revisit key passages to appreciate the setup and reversals.
  2. Note how the narrator handles everyday detail, and consider how humor and suspense arise from it.
  3. Read alongside other Stockton short stories to observe his habitual premises and ways of closing.
  4. English learners can note period vocabulary and sentence patterns, guessing meanings from context before checking them.

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

FAQ

Can I read this without having read other Stockton works? Yes. The book is short and relatively self-contained, requiring no prior reading. For a fuller sense of the author's narrative wit, you can follow it with his better-known short stories and compare his habitual ingenious premises and light humor; the reward will be greater.
Is this book suitable for intensive reading by English learners? It suits extensive reading or light intensive reading. The text is the public-domain English original; the language is not very difficult but carries late nineteenth-century vocabulary and usage. Learners can read through first for plot, then select passages for vocabulary and sentence work, judging period expressions from context.
Does the electronic edition have notes or an introduction? This edition comes from Project Gutenberg and mainly provides the public-domain original, usually without modern scholarly notes or a detailed introduction. Readers wanting background can look up the author's life and the literary context of the period, and simply note unfamiliar words and allusions as they read.
How difficult is it to read? Overall it is a moderately easy English novel, with fairly simple sentence structure and a short length. The main difficulties are period vocabulary and cultural context rather than grammar. Readers with general English reading ability can finish it with only occasional dictionary help.

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About the author

Stockton, Frank Richard, 1834-1902 Author

Frank Richard Stockton (1834–1902) was an American writer known for humorous and fanciful short stories and novels. This collection holds 33 of his works, spanning a variety of genres: the short story “The Lady, or the Tiger?”, famous for its dilemma ending; the whimsical tales of “The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales”; light, comic travel and domestic stories such as “The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine”, “The Associate Hermits” and “The Squirrel Inn”; and adventure and exotic settings in “Kate Bonnet: The Romance of a Pirate‘s Daughter” and “A Bicycle of Cathay”. His writing is marked by witty dialogue, absurd premises and gentle satire, with brisk plots and surprising turns, making him a distinctive figure in late nineteenth-century American popular literature. Public information is limited, so details of his life beyond his dates are omitted.