The Well in the Desert
Author: Emily Sarah Holt (1836-1893)
Added by: NicholasHodson
Added Date: 2007-11-29
Language: English
Subjects: Athelstane; Emily; Holt; Well; Desert; PDF; TXT; ZIP; HTML
Publishers: Athelstane e-Books, London, England, United Kingdom
Collections: folkscanomy fiction, folkscanomy, additional collections
Pages Count: 195
PPI Count: 72
PDF Count: 2
Total Size: 54.73 MB
PDF Size: 35.25 MB
Extensions: djvu, gif, htm, pdf, zip, gz, torrent
Rights: We used a Plustek OpticBook 3600 scanner to scan the pages. We then made a pdf which we used to assist with checking and editing the OCRed text. To make a text version we used ABBYY Finereader 8 to produce a first draft of the text, and Athelstane software to find misreads and improve the text. We proof-read the chapters, and then made a CD with the book read aloud by either Fonix ISpeak or TextAloud MP3. The last step enables us to hear and correct most of the errors that may have been missed by the other steps, as well as entertaining us during the work of transcription. The resulting text can be read either here at the Internet Archive or at www.athelstane.co.uk. This process represents a large investment of time and skill. You may freely download a copy for your own use. We do not in the least mind if anybody wishes to offer any of our work on another website, but would point out that they should state that the copyright is Athelstane's, rather than claiming it as their own. They should also state that, as we are constantly working to improve our texts, their readers should refer back to our version if they need to verify a text. Commercial use strictly forbidden.
Year: 1872
Contributor: Nick Hodson
License: Unknown License
Downloads: 2K
Views: 52
Total Files: 26
Media Type: texts
Total Files: 9
Last Modified: 2007-11-29 13:04:13
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Description
The action takes place at the end of the fourteenth century and the start of the fifteenth. It deals largely with a family connected with Arundel in Sussex. They seem to have been rather nasty people, highly motivated by greed and desire for even higher stations in life. They were fairly well-placed by today's standards, being closely related to various of the Kings of England of the day. Some of the women in the story are quite as bad as many of the men.
When these wicked people had done their wicked deeds there were often unfortunate children, dispossessed or forgotten in some attic of the castle. One of these is the heroine of this story. She had never been told who or where her mother was. By a series of coincidences she comes across the name of a person who may know the answers to these questions. I will not spoil the story for you by telling you any more.
Throughout the book there is constant reference to Christ as the Well, the supplier of the vital Water of Life. Christianity was in a terrible mess at the time, with numerous sects, and with the members of any one sect feeling free to execute by any means the members of any other sect. There's plainly a modern parallel here.
On the whole the story is based on fact and on valuable contemporary records. When Miss Holt wrote the story it seemed likely that Philippa, the central figure, was accurately represented. Unfortunately, after the book was complete it was found that she could never have existed, so the poor authoress had to present her book as it stands, with an apology at the end.