The Vast Abyss cover

The Vast Abyss

Rating 3.0
Word count
684K words
Chapters
69

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 Vast Abyss by George Manville FennAuthor: Fenn, George Manville, 1831-1909,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Sep 27, 2009

Editor's review

This work comes from the prolific nineteenth-century British boys' novelist George Manville Fenn and is a typical example of Victorian juvenile adventure literature. It continues the author's characteristic style of building suspense and peril, with tightly paced plotting, making it a suitable introductory sample for understanding the landscape of old-fashioned British boys' adventure fiction. The Project Gutenberg edition is an English-language ebook in the public domain, free of copyright restrictions, easy for readers to obtain, and also useful for studying the production and dissemination history of public-domain ebooks. Reading it offers both the rhythm and appeal of old-style adventure narrative and a primary source for observing the themes and values of nineteenth-century English juvenile reading matter. For readers studying the history of children's literature, changes in the English language, or the Gutenberg Project itself, this book has value both as material and as reading.

Who it's for

A good fit for

  • General readers who enjoy Victorian English adventure fiction
  • Scholars studying nineteenth-century juvenile literature and the history of children's books
  • Students hoping to improve their English reading through original ebooks
  • Readers interested in public-domain ebooks and the Gutenberg Project

Not a good fit for

  • Readers expecting modern pacing and contemporary values in narrative
  • Beginners with weak English reading skills who need Chinese assistance

Reading tips

  1. Read the opening chapters first to gauge the narrative pace, then decide whether to read the whole book
  2. Read alongside background material on nineteenth-century British society to understand character motivations
  3. Note unfamiliar vocabulary and old-fashioned expressions as material for English language learning

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
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69

FAQ

Is this book suitable for English beginners to read directly?
Not very suitable. The original is nineteenth-century English, with sentence patterns and vocabulary characteristic of the era, and beginners may struggle with long sentences and old-fashioned expressions. It is advisable to have intermediate or higher English reading ability, or to read with annotated or introductory materials.
What are the features of the Project Gutenberg edition?
This edition is a free public-domain ebook sourced from the Gutenberg Project, freely downloadable and readable, but it usually lacks modern editorial notes or a Chinese introduction, so readers need to supply background knowledge themselves.
Is this book similar in style to the author's other works?
Fenn is known for juvenile adventure stories, and this book likewise revolves around peril and growing up. If you like the narrative pace of his other works, this book will be similar in subject and approach; for specific plot differences, refer to the original text.

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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.