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The Obstacle Race

Dell, Ethel M. (Ethel May), 1881-1939Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.2
Word count
557K words
Chapters
56
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Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Social ObservationPortrait GalleryStruggle Against FateMarriage DilemmaEmotional DepthLove EntanglementsComplex HumanityPopular NarrativeVictorian EraFemale Perspective

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 Obstacle Race by Ethel M. DellAuthor: Dell, Ethel M. (Ethel May), 1881-1939,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Mar 1, 2004

Editor's review

Ethel M. Dell was a major writer of popular British romance fiction in the early twentieth century. The Obstacle Race continues in her characteristic vein of emotional entanglement and twists of fate, using her characters' choices in the face of obstacles to dramatize the tension among love, duty, and self-sacrifice. As a free Project Gutenberg eBook, its chief value lies in offering zero-barrier access to the narrative pleasures of late Victorian to Edwardian popular fiction, making it a useful sample for understanding the generic features of English-language romance fiction of the period. The original English text is plainly set, and the reading experience depends on how readily the reader adapts to early English popular prose. The relationships among the characters and the emotional turns are the main driving force of the reading, and readers may situate the book in the context of the early twentieth-century women's reading market. Reading it alongside other British popular novels of the same period is recommended, to observe how genre narrative is inherited and changed.

Who it's for

A good fit for

  • Literary readers interested in early twentieth-century British popular romance fiction
  • Enthusiasts and scholars of English-language romance genre fiction
  • Self-learners who wish to encounter English-language novels through free eBooks
  • Story-oriented readers who enjoy classical emotional entanglement and narratives of fate

Not a good fit for

  • Readers who prefer fast-paced contemporary web fiction with strong plotting
  • Readers with weak English reading skills who find early English prose hard to follow
  • Readers expecting suspense, mystery, or serious social critique

Reading tips

  1. Read the first and last chapters first to grasp the main relationships and central conflict, then return to the middle turning points.
  2. Keep pen and paper at hand to note forms of address and family relationships, to reduce confusion from the repetition of early English names.
  3. Read it alongside other British popular romance fiction of the same period, noting the genre conventions of emotional narrative.

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
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56

FAQ

Is this book suitable for English learners?
It suits intermediate to advanced English learners. It is early twentieth-century English popular fiction, and its sentence structures and diction carry period features that can help readers become familiar with early modern English narrative expression; but the vocabulary and syntax pose some challenge for beginner and intermediate learners, so it is advisable to sample a chapter first to judge the difficulty before deciding whether to read it through.
What are the features of the Project Gutenberg edition?
This edition is released by Project Gutenberg as a free eBook, providing the full English text of the original book. The layout prioritizes textual readability, with no modern introduction or notes and none of the marketing packaging of commercial publications. Readers can obtain the text directly but must adapt themselves to the original language style and the edition's appearance.
Do I need to know the author's background before reading?
Prior research is not necessary, but knowing that the author was active in early twentieth-century British popular fiction helps in understanding the period context of the emotional narrative and the characters' choices. Readers may begin with the text itself and then look up the generic features of popular fiction of the same period as needed, forming a fuller frame of reference for reading.

Comments

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About the author

Dell, Ethel M. (Ethel May), 1881-1939 Author

Ethel M. Dell (1881–1939) was an early twentieth-century British writer of popular fiction, known for romance and adventure stories with eventful plots. Her novels often place love entanglements against exotic or wild settings, with characters moving the narrative forward through misunderstandings, danger and emotional trials; the pace is brisk, with the dramatic quality typical of popular reading of the period. Sixteen of her works are held in this collection, including The Way of an Eagle, The Knave of Diamonds, The Obstacle Race, The Lamp in the Desert, Charles Rex and the short-story collection Rosa Mundi and Other Stories, showing that she wrote mainly novels and also some shorter fiction. Public information about the details of her life is limited, and this entry makes no inferences about them; readers may learn about her thematic interests and narrative style through the works listed above.

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