The Lay Anthony: A Romance

Joseph HergesheimerProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
282K words
Chapters
29

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Portrait GalleryFate and FortuneLove EntanglementsGrowing UpTender SentimentYouthful Vibe

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 Lay Anthony: A Romance by Joseph HergesheimerAuthor: Hergesheimer, Joseph, 1880-1954,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: May 1, 2016

Editor's review

The Lay Anthony: A Romance is a public-domain electronic reprint of Joseph Hergesheimer's early novel, a work outside the American literary canon but still of scholarly value. Hergesheimer is known for detailed landscape description and psychological characterization; the book follows the emotional and spiritual journey of a layman named Anthony, with romantic coloring and the narrative rhythm of turn-of-the-century American fiction. For Chinese readers, its value lies not in a gripping plot but in observing how early twentieth-century American popular literature wrote about love, faith, and self-choice. The Project Gutenberg edition offers a clean English text, suitable as English-literature reading material or a supplementary text for American literature courses. When reading, focus on shifts in narrative perspective and the symbolic function of landscape description rather than expecting a fast-paced story. Because the language is English and the book is early, sentences are long and the cultural background unfamiliar, so patience is required. Overall, this is a book suited to slow reading, note-taking, and comparative reading with works of the same period.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read one chapter first to get a sense of the narrative pace, then decide whether to take notes on characters and themes
  2. Prepare an English reference book or e-dictionary; for long sentences, identify subject and predicate first, then work out the modifiers
  3. Read alongside American fiction of the same period to observe shared features and differences in romantic technique
  4. After finishing, write a hundred-word summary to check whether you have grasped Anthony's core dilemma

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
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29

FAQ

Is this book in Chinese or English? The text is in English, a public-domain electronic text released by Project Gutenberg. Chinese readers need some English reading ability; this edition currently provides no Chinese translation.
Can I understand it without a background in American literature? Yes, but patience is needed. It helps to first learn the basic features of late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century American fiction, and while reading, focus on psychological and landscape description rather than trying to understand every cultural allusion at once.
Is it suitable as English-learning material? It suits upper-intermediate and advanced learners as extensive reading, but not beginners. Sentences tend to be long and vocabulary literary; use a dictionary and limit how much you read at a time, aiming mainly to grasp the general meaning.
Why is it recommended to pay attention to landscape description? Hergesheimer's narration often uses landscape to set off a character's state of mind; landscape is not mere background. Noticing how details such as weather, terrain, and light correspond to Anthony's shifts in mood will help you better understand the novel's romantic technique.

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About the author

Joseph Hergesheimer Author · American · 1880–1954

Joseph Hergesheimer (1880–1954) was an American novelist born in Philadelphia. He first studied painting and later turned to writing. He is known for depicting the lives of the wealthy and for an ornate, decorative prose style. His representative works include The Three Black Pennys, Java Head, Linda Condon, and Cytherea. In 1922, critics rated him 'the most important American writer,' though his reputation declined in the 1930s. The collection here holds 12 of his works, including the novels Mountain Blood, Wild Oranges, and Tubal Cain. His fiction often focuses on upper-class life, with carefully wrought prose and atmosphere, giving him a distinctive place in early twentieth-century American fiction. Publicly available information on his life and work is limited, and this note relies only on verified facts and widely accepted records.