The Queen's Scarlet cover

The Queen's Scarlet

Rating 3.1
Word count
430K words
Chapters
43

Tags

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 Queen's Scarlet by George Manville FennAuthor: Fenn, George Manville, 1831-1909,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Mar 12, 2008

Editor's review

Fenn was a prolific 19th-century British novelist, and The Queen's Scarlet continues in his popular storytelling mode, built around army life and the fortunes of its characters, with a plot driven by incident and clear serial-fiction traits. Its value for readers lies in the everyday detail and moral framework of old-style military fiction: characters are plainly good or bad, conflict is direct, and it serves as a sample of Victorian popular literature. As a Project Gutenberg e-text it is easy to obtain and to search by character and chapter. While reading, note how army rank, ideas of honour and family ties interlock, and observe how the author handles suspense and reversal. Bear in mind that its attitudes and narrative methods carry the marks of their time; modern readers should keep a historical distance rather than judge it by present-day standards.

Who it's for

A good fit for

  • Readers interested in military subjects and old-fashioned adventure fiction
  • Readers and students studying Victorian popular literature
  • Intermediate and advanced learners seeking to broaden their reading of English originals
  • Casual readers who enjoy direct plots with clear good and evil

Not a good fit for

  • Readers who prefer the complex psychological portrayal of modern literature
  • Beginners with limited English reading experience who rely on translations
  • Readers who find old-fashioned gender and class attitudes hard to accept

Reading tips

  1. Read chapter by chapter, noting character relationships and key events briefly after each.
  2. Use army rank and ideas of honour as threads, observing the characters' choices.
  3. Read alongside adventure novels of the same period and compare their suspense and moral frameworks.
  4. When you meet unfamiliar military terms, first guess from context, then check them together.

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

FAQ

Is this book a work of military history?
No. It is popular fiction set against army life, focused on the characters' fortunes and the progress of the plot rather than on historical verification. Readers should not use it as a source for military history.
What background knowledge is needed to read this book?
Some familiarity with the basic ranks and ideas of honour in the 19th-century British army helps. Even without it you can follow the plot, though your understanding of the characters' behaviour will be somewhat shallower.
Will the book's attitudes seem outdated?
They clearly bear the marks of their era, especially regarding gender, class and honour. Read it with a historical eye, as a sample of Victorian popular literature rather than a model of contemporary values.

Comments

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About the author

George Manville Fenn (1831–1909) was a British author whose biographical details remain limited in publicly available sources. The library holds 127 of his works, including The Little Skipper: A Son of a Sailor, The Silver Canyon: A Tale of the Western Plains, and Sappers and Miners: The Flood beneath the Sea. Most center on youthful growth and adventure, often set at sea, in mining districts, or on the western plains. He also wrote such biographical work as George Alfred Henty: The Story of an Active Life. His writing emphasizes plot momentum and the shaping of character in young readers, and is commonly classified as inspirational coming-of-age fiction, holding a place in the tradition of juvenile adventure novels.

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