The King's Daughters

Emily Sarah HoltProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.8

Word count: 338K words
Chapters: 34

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 King's Daughters by Emily Sarah HoltAuthor: Holt, Emily Sarah, 1836-1893,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Oct 20, 2007

Editor's review

The King's Daughters comes from the pen of Emily Sarah Holt, a prolific nineteenth-century British author, and Project Gutenberg classifies it as juvenile literature. Holt's works often use historical settings as a stage and emphasize character and moral choice, and this novel continues her steady narrative style. The title points to royal daughters, and the story revolves around family, identity, and duty, with plain plotting and clear relationships; it is a useful sample of Victorian-era juvenile reading. Note that such works carry an obvious moralizing tone of their time, and today's readers may find the pace slow and the preaching heavy, but for that very reason it is also a mirror of nineteenth-century children's literature values. As a free ebook, it suits literary history enthusiasts, advancing English readers, and researchers interested in the evolution of juvenile literature. Read it with a comparative eye, thinking about how the "coming-of-age story" of that era differs from contemporary YA fiction in theme and technique.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in Victorian-era juvenile literature
Literature lovers who want to understand the nineteenth-century British moral narrative tradition
English learners with some foundation who want to advance to reading public-domain originals
Students and teachers studying the history of children's literature and the evolution of the coming-of-age story

Not a good fit for

Young readers who prefer modern, fast-paced YA fiction
Readers with low tolerance for strongly moralizing narrative
Beginners with little English reading experience who need annotated support

Reading tips

Read the opening chapters first to get familiar with the characters and period setting, then proceed chapter by chapter
Note the moral themes that recur in the book and observe how the author uses plot to make moral points
Read alongside contemporary coming-of-age novels and compare differences in theme and narrative technique
For the English original, listen to an audiobook simultaneously to ease comprehension of long sentences

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 suitable for young readers to read directly?

The original was written for nineteenth-century young readers, and its themes are not obscure, but the English is distant from today's usage and the narrative pace is slow. Contemporary young readers who want to read the English original directly should try one or two chapters first to confirm they can adapt before continuing; it can also serve as parent-child shared reading or classroom selected reading material.

What does "King's Daughters" in the title refer to?

The title points directly to royal daughters, and the story revolves around their identity, family relationships, and coming-of-age choices. Specific plot details should be based on the text; readers can watch how the author uses the royal background to discuss themes such as duty, character, and faith rather than treating it as a work of historical research.

What kind of writer was Holt?

Emily Sarah Holt was a prolific nineteenth-century British author whose works were mostly aimed at young readers, often using history as a background and character education as their purpose. Her narrative is steady and her moral reasoning clear, bearing a distinct mark of her era, and she is a useful sample for understanding the style of juvenile reading of that time.

Is there a Chinese edition of this book?

Project Gutenberg provides the English public-domain ebook, and the accompanying materials do not mention a Chinese translation. If English reading is difficult, readers can first use a dictionary or choose a bilingual reading approach, focusing on grasping character relationships and thematic threads rather than struggling over every word.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Emily Sarah Holt Author · British · 1836–1893

Emily Sarah Holt (1836–1893) was a British historical novelist, born at Stubbylee, Bacup, Lancashire, and died in London on Christmas Day 1893. She wrote more than fifty books, mostly historical fiction for young readers, drawing on subjects from the Middle Ages to the Stuart era and marked by a strong Protestant Evangelical spirit. The library holds 19 of her works, including Clare Avery: A Story of the Spanish Armada, Mistress Margery, Robin Tremayne and The White Rose of Langley, as well as tales set against the Gunpowder Plot and the 1745 uprising. Her fiction emphasises historical atmosphere and moral instruction and found readers in the late Victorian period; public information on the details of her life is limited.