The Rival Crusoes
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers interested in nineteenth-century English young-adult adventure fiction
- Literature enthusiasts studying desert-island narratives and their intertextual relationship with Robinson Crusoe
- Learners who wish to practice reading English originals through free public-domain eBooks
- Young readers who enjoy sea, desert-island, and companionship adventure subjects
Not a good fit for
- Readers of modern genre fiction who prefer fast pacing and strong plot twists
- Readers unaccustomed to Victorian English syntax and narrative pacing
- Academic researchers seeking in-depth information on the author's biography or textual scholarship
Reading tips
- First read the relevant chapters of Robinson Crusoe, then compare them with this book's "rival" setup to appreciate the intertextual interest.
- Keep pen and paper handy to note key desert-island survival plot points and trace the turning points in the two protagonists' relationship.
- For the English original, pair it with an audiobook or a bilingual edition to lower the barrier of classical syntax.
- After reading, write a short review discussing how the values of nineteenth-century boys' adventure fiction differ from those of today.
About the publisher
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
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FAQ
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About the author
William Henry Giles Kingston (1814–1880) was a British author of adventure stories for young readers. Born in London, he spent part of his youth with his father in Porto, Portugal. He rose to fame in 1851 with Peter the Whaler and thereafter devoted himself to tales of the sea and exploration, writing more than a hundred books over his lifetime and also translating works by Jules Verne. His notable works include The Three Midshipmen, Captain Cook: His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries, and Great African Travellers: From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley, most of them drawing on seafaring, exotic adventure, and the deeds of the British Navy. He excelled at linking the adventures of young protagonists with informative and moral content, in briskly paced stories rich in maritime atmosphere that were widely popular with young readers in the Victorian era. The collection here contains 133 of his works. Public information on his early education and specific experiences is limited, so no conjecture is offered here.
