For Due Thursday March 17 (the Thursday after Spring Break
I want each of you to read an American novel published between 1874 and 1910. The authors and titles are found through the link called E-Fiction. The novels on this list will be, by and large, the kinds of things that literate Americans were reading during those days. Later, some of them came to be considered "classics". Others disappeared from public consciousness as fads and interests changed. Write a short, two part paper in which you reflect on what the novel contributes to your understanding of life around the turn of the century. When you reflect, I’d like to have you imagine reading the book “back then”, and to think a bit about how the book might effect the thoughts of a person living in the Gilded Age. In the second part think of the book from your outlook as a person living in 2016. There are two lists on the page; on of books written for adults, and the other of books written for children (or for adults to read to children).
If you wish, you may read both a book for children and one for adults--there will be extra credit for those of you who employ this option.
