The Three Fates

Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion), 1854-1909Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.4

Word count: 792K words
Chapters: 80

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 Three Fates by F. Marion CrawfordAuthor: Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion), 1854-1909,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Nov 9, 2016

Editor's review

The Three Fates is by the American novelist F. Marion Crawford and belongs to the vein of romantic storytelling he excelled in. The story revolves around fate and coincidence: characters are pushed by seemingly chance encounters toward unforeseen endings, with the dramatic tension and sense of fatality characteristic of late nineteenth-century popular fiction. Crawford writes fluently and is skilled at setting scenes and building suspense; the plot moves with a sense of rhythm and is quite entertaining. Its value lies in showing the narrative pleasures of popular English-language fiction of that era: themes of fate, family entanglements, and emotional conflict interwoven, making it both light bedtime reading and a sample for observing late nineteenth-century Anglo-American popular reading tastes. Note that the work bears clear marks of its time, and its characterizations and gender views may not meet contemporary expectations; it is best read with an understanding of its historical context.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who enjoy late nineteenth-century English-language romantic fiction
Researchers interested in fate-themed narratives in popular literature
Learners seeking light, plot-driven English reading material
Literature lovers interested in the history of Anglo-American popular reading

Not a good fit for

Readers who prefer contemporary realism or experimental narrative
Readers who dislike fatalistic setups and plots driven by coincidence
Readers seeking deep social critique

Reading tips

Treat it as light reading and follow the plot without over-researching.
Notice how "fate" drives the story through both coincidence and characters' choices.
Compare it with other popular English-language novels of the same period to observe shared themes.
If using it for English study, excerpt scene descriptions and dialogue to get a feel for nineteenth-century style.

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

Is this serious literature or popular fiction?

It is closer to late nineteenth-century popular romantic fiction, valuing plot tension and reading pleasure rather than social critique or narrative experiment. It is suitable as a sample of popular reading tastes of the time, not as a strictly canonical classic.

What do the "three Fates" refer to in the book?

The title borrows the image of the three goddesses who control fate in classical myth to signal the book's theme of fate interwoven with coincidence. How exactly this plays out in the plot is for the reader to discover; it is best not to map the mythological details onto the story in advance.

Is the original English hard to read?

Crawford's narrative language is generally fluent, but late nineteenth-century phrasing, long sentences, and a few old-fashioned words may pose obstacles. Readers with intermediate English or above can get through it with a dictionary; the point is to follow the plot rather than read word by word.

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About the author

Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion), 1854-1909 Author

F. Marion Crawford (Francis Marion Crawford, 1854–1909) was a notably prolific English-language novelist. The library holds 46 of his works, spanning a wide range of subjects: long novels set in Italy, such as Saracinesca, Greifenstein and Fair Margaret: A Portrait; the two-volume Ave Roma Immortalis, which portrays the history and monuments of Rome; the Arabian tale Khaled, A Tale of Arabia; and atmospheric ghost stories including The Upper Berth and Wandering Ghosts. These works show a writer skilled at evoking foreign and historical settings, with clear narrative structure and steady plotting, accomplished both in popular long fiction and in tales of the strange. His supernatural stories in particular have been favored by later anthologies and have had some influence on the English ghost-story tradition. Because public information is limited, biographical details are not elaborated here; the outline above rests on the works in the library's holdings.