The World's Desire

Lang, Andrew, 1844-1912Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.7
Word count
448K words
Chapters
45

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Human NatureDesire AllegoryRomantic FantasyClassic NarrativeFantasy ImageryShort Story CollectionExotic CultureVictorian Era

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 World's Desire by H. Rider Haggard and Andrew LangAuthor: Lang, Andrew, 1844-1912,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Apr 4, 2006

Editor's review

The World's Desire is an English novel co-written by Andrew Lang and H. Rider Haggard, a public-domain literary work. Its value lies not in delivering settled knowledge but in presenting two late nineteenth-century writers' literary imagination of the ancient world and the theme of desire. Lang was known for his work on mythology and folk tales, Haggard for adventure narrative, and their collaboration gives the book a character poised between romance and adventure. For readers curious about the landscape of late Victorian popular English fiction, it serves as a sample; for students of English literature who need to engage with original texts in the PR category, it is also usable reading material. A caveat: this is not an easy read for beginners, and its language and narrative pace bear clear marks of its era, so it is best understood within the literary context of the late nineteenth century. Suited to slow reading in quiet, unhurried stretches, and usable as a supplementary text in English literature courses discussing the boundary between popular and classic.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Start with the preface or publishing note to understand the two authors' collaboration and the period context, then move into the text.
  2. Proceed chapter by chapter, summarizing plot and character relations in a sentence or two after each, so old-fashioned long sentences don't bog you down.
  3. Mark mythological allusions or unfamiliar place names as you go, then look them up together after finishing the chapter to keep reading连贯.
  4. If using it for a course, read it alongside other late Victorian adventure novels to compare narrative conventions.

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

FAQ

Is this book suitable for English beginners? Not really. Written in the late nineteenth century, it has markedly period sentence structures and narrative pacing, and beginners can easily lose the thread in long sentences and old-fashioned expressions. It is better attempted after some experience with English originals, or read with an annotated edition and introduction.
Is this book connected to Andrew Lang's fairy-tale research? Andrew Lang is known for his work on mythology and folk tales, but The World's Desire is a novel co-written with Haggard, a work of literary creation rather than scholarship. Readers can note its romance and mythological elements, but it should not be read as a work of mythology.
What background knowledge is needed for reading? It helps to be prepared for the narrative style of late nineteenth-century popular English fiction and to have a general sense of Haggard-style adventure romance. For the ancient-world setting, you can look up place names and allusions as you go, but there is no need to study the history systematically beforehand, which would only add burden.
What should I note when reading the e-book? Public-domain e-books usually lack modern editorial notes and may have plain formatting. Use reading software with adjustable font size and annotation so you can record character and plot threads as you go, then review your marks at the end for an overall grasp.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Lang, Andrew, 1844-1912 Author

Andrew Lang (1844–1912) was a British writer, poet and folklorist best known for compiling collections of fairy tales and myths. The library holds 77 of his works, including The Blue Fairy Book, The Red Fairy Book, The Yellow Fairy Book, The Violet Fairy Book and The Brown Fairy Book, as well as Tales of Troy and Greece and The Homeric Hymns. He gathered, edited and retold folk tales from Europe and around the world, naming the volumes by colour; his clear, fluent prose served both children and folklore scholarship. These collections preserved a wealth of oral material and shaped the modern English-speaking world's image of fairy tales, leaving a lasting influence on fairy-tale publishing and comparative story research. Public information on his life is limited, so this note focuses on his editorial and literary contributions.