The Last Stetson

Fox, John, Jr., 1862-1919Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.2

Word count: 52K words
Chapters: 6

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 Last Stetson by Jr. John Fox Author: Fox, John, Jr., 1862-1919. Language: English. Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature. Release Date: Jan 1, 2002

Editor's review

The Last Stetson is a novel by John Fox Jr., falling under the category of American and Canadian literature and released free through Project Gutenberg. Fox often set his work in the mountain regions of the American South, and his characters are typically bound up with mountain life and family feuds; this work continues that regional flavor. As an early public-domain electronic text, its value lies in giving readers low-cost access to the narrative style and language of American regional fiction from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is not long and works well as an introduction to this branch of American literature. Note that the book is in the original English without modern annotation, so regional dialect and historical background may require extra checking, and readers should not expect a detailed introduction or scholarly commentary.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in American regional fiction and Southern mountain settings
Readers who want a short work as an entry point to late nineteenth-century American literature
Readers with English reading ability who like to look up background on their own

Not a good fit for

Beginning readers who need modern notes and introductions
Readers expecting complex plots and strong dramatic conflict
Readers not yet fluent in English who rely on translations

Reading tips

Read through once to grasp the story, then revisit passages involving regional dialect.
Consult material on the geography and history of the Southern mountains to understand the characters' situation.
Compare this work with Fox's other mountain-themed writing to appreciate the consistency of his narrative style.

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

How long is this book, and how hard is it to read?

As a public-domain novel in the Project Gutenberg collection, it is relatively short, but it is in the original English with no modern annotation; regional dialect and historical background may add difficulty, so it suits readers with some grounding in English.

What subjects does John Fox Jr. mainly write about?

According to public-domain sources, Fox Jr. was an American author of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries whose work drew on life in the Southern mountains; this book also falls under American and Canadian literature and has a pronounced regional character.

Is this book suitable for classroom or book-club use?

It can serve as supplementary reading in American regional fiction, but because it lacks modern notes and an introduction, organizers should supply background on the author and era; otherwise the barrier to understanding is fairly high.

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

Fox, John, Jr., 1862-1919 Author

John Fox, Jr. (1862–1919) was an American writer whose biographical details are limited in publicly available sources. He was a prolific author, and thirteen of his works are collected here. Judging from his representative works, his writing drew largely on the Appalachian region of the United States, especially the Cumberland Mountains and Kentucky, as seen in The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, and A Knight of the Cumberland. His stories often center on mountain life, family feuds, and the changes of their times, and are marked by strong local color and a romantic tone. Some of his works were later adapted for the stage and screen, giving him a certain influence in American popular literature of his day. He also wrote the travelogue Following the Sun-Flag: A Vain Pursuit Through Manchuria, which records his journey to the Far East.