The Ordeal of Richard Feverel - by George Meredith

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

The Ordeal of Richard Feverel is an 1859 novel by English author George Meredith.  (US Edition)  (UK Edition)  One of several candidates for "the first novelist," this is Meredith's best known book.  I think you have to say he has been forgotten when the Amazon UK site has no reviews of the free Kindle edition of this book!

The foreword of the book has a rather different take on Meredith's posterity:

Among the Victorian novelists, George Meredith occupies a place apart. Unlike Dickens, Thackeray, and Eliot, he appeals to a select few. Those who appreciate him are folk of his own temper—cultivated, intellectual, urbane. They are persons of taste and discernment. They are generally the middle-aged rather than the young. They are those who, aloof and contemplative, relish the comedy of life, rather than those who throw themselves whole-heartedly into the game. It is not to be marvelled at, therefore, that Meredith should have won his way slowly, or that recognition, when it came, should have rendered his position unique and secure.

I would say painting George Eliot's "Middlemarch" as middlebrow or pop culture is kind of a hard sell.

However, you don't have to read these sour grapes - just dive into the novel and immediately encounter:

After five years of marriage, and twelve of friendship, Sir Austin was left to his loneliness with nothing to ease his heart of love upon save a little baby boy in a cradle. He forgave the man: he put him aside as poor for his wrath. The woman he could not forgive; she had sinned every way. Simple ingratitude to a benefactor was a pardonable transgression, for he was not one to recount and crush the culprit under the heap of his good deeds. But her he had raised to be his equal, and he judged her as his equal. She had blackened the world's fair aspect for him.

As with any candidate for first novel, you can expect some oddities in the structure.

A comrade of some description was necessary, for Richard was neither to go to school nor to college. Sir Austin considered that the schools were corrupt, and maintained that young lads might by parental vigilance be kept pretty secure from the Serpent until Eve sided with him: a period that might be deferred, he said. He had a system of education for his son. How it worked we shall see.

So it seems this is a book about education . . .

Enjoy!

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. (It is one of the top 100 blogs on Amazon.)This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Here is a video of my mother, at 97, a new convert to the Kindle!

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers. You may e-mail me at marilyn@marilynlitt.com

Out of Mulberry Street Stories of Tenement life in New York City - by Jacob Riis

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

Out of Mulberry Street Stories of Tenement life in New York City, is non-fiction by American Jacob Riis. (US Edition)  (UK Edition)   I might have said he was Danish as he was born and grew up in Denmark before emigrating; but the famous social reformer was American through and through.  The account of his many failures, ill-advised decisions and near starvation before he achieved spectacular success as a journalist make his Wikipedia biography enthralling reading.  Yes, those are words seldom paired - but someone did a good job there on Riis.

But turning to the book on offer:

It purports to be a series of journalism pieces, but seems to have been put together as one piece on Christmas in the Bowery.  I don't want to mislead you that this is a Christmas story.  In fact he describes a Jewish wedding.  It is just that Riis is writing at that time of year when so many get the only time they will have off work.

Farthest down-town, where the island narrows toward the Battery, and warehouses crowd the few remaining tenements, the somber-hued colony of Syrians is astir with preparation for the holiday. How comes it that in the only settlement of the real Christmas people in New York the corner saloon appropriates to itself all the outward signs of it? Even the floral cross that is nailed over the door of the Orthodox church is long withered and dead: it has been there since Easter, and it is yet twelve days to Christmas by the belated reckoning of the Greek Church. 

But if the houses show no sign of the holiday, within there is nothing lacking. The whole colony is gone a-visiting. There are enough of the unorthodox to set the fashion, and the rest follow the custom of the country. The men go from house to house, laugh, shake hands, and kiss one another on both cheeks, with the salutation, “Kol am va antom Salimoon.” “Every year and you are safe,” the Syrian guide renders it into English; and a non-professional interpreter amends it: “May you grow happier year by year.”

The moral of this brief review might be, "expect the unexpected."  On the eve of September 11, my attention turned to New York City in 2001, but this book written in 1898 has just brought me back to the present day.

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. (It is one of the top 100 blogs on Amazon.)This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Here is a video of my mother, at 97, a new convert to the Kindle!

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers. You may e-mail me at marilyn@marilynlitt.com