The Substitute Millionaire

Footner, Hulbert, 1879-1944Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.2

Word count: 459K words
Chapters: 46

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 Substitute Millionaire by Hulbert FootnerAuthor: Footner, Hulbert, 1879-1944,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: May 25, 2018

Editor's review

The Substitute Millionaire is an English-language novel by the Canadian-American writer Hulbert Footner, made available as a free ebook by Project Gutenberg. Footner is known for tightly plotted popular narratives skilled at building suspense, and this work likewise revolves around a dislocation of identity and wealth, using the premise of a "substitute millionaire" to drive the story and presenting turns in the characters' fortunes within an easy reading pace. For readers who want a low-threshold introduction to early twentieth-century popular English fiction, the book's length and language difficulty are friendly, and it can serve as reading for fragmented time such as commutes or before sleep. As a public-domain ebook it is better suited as English reading material or supplementary reading in genre fiction than as a scholarly text. When reading, note how the author creates tension through dialogue and scene changes, and compare it with similar popular fiction of the same period to appreciate the shared pleasures of plot design in popular literature.

Who it's for

A good fit for

English learners who want to practice reading with light original English novels
Readers interested in early twentieth-century British and American popular fiction
Casual readers who enjoy plots of mistaken identity and suspense
Readers who need free public-domain ebook resources

Not a good fit for

Professional researchers seeking literary history or textual criticism
Readers who prefer contemporary pacing and complex characterization
Readers who need a Chinese translation and cannot easily read the English original

Reading tips

Skim chapter titles and opening paragraphs first to grasp the relationships between characters before reading in detail.
When encountering unfamiliar words, prioritize understanding the plot rather than looking up every word, so as to keep reading fluently.
After finishing, revisit key turning points to sort out how the author sets up suspense.
If using the book for English study, excerpt dialogue passages to appreciate the features of colloquial expression.

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

What English level is this book suitable for?

As early twentieth-century popular fiction, its sentence patterns and vocabulary are generally everyday, without a large number of obscure terms. Readers with a college English foundation or who can read with a dictionary can usually finish it smoothly, making it suitable practice material for moving from short stories to full-length original reading.

Why does the recommendation not mention specific plot points?

The available material provides only bibliographic information and the publication source, without a detailed plot summary. To avoid inventing content that is not in the book, the recommendation focuses on the author's style, the type of text, and reading scenarios; readers must read the original to learn the specific story.

What should I note when reading a public-domain ebook?

This book comes from Project Gutenberg and is a free public-domain resource; the formatting is mainly plain text and may lack the notes and introductions of modern editions. Have a dictionary tool at hand while reading, and note differences in paragraph display across devices, adjusting font size and line spacing as needed to improve the experience.

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About the author

Footner, Hulbert, 1879-1944 Author

Hulbert Footner (1879–1944) was an English-language writer active in the first half of the twentieth century; reliable public information about his life and nationality is limited. Eleven of his works are held in this collection, commonly classified under inspirational growth. Representative titles include Ramshackle House, The Sealed Valley, The Owl Taxi, The Huntress, The Deaves Affair, and The Substitute Millionaire. Judging from these titles and themes, his writing often centers on ordinary people making choices and growing amid hardship, and ranges from everyday detective stories to novels with a frontier flavor, with compact plots and characters developed through action and psychology. Since biographical material is scarce, his life should not be embellished with conjecture; readers may instead turn to these works for his popular narrative interest in human nature and fate.