This shortish novel first appeared in 1841, and was published in a collection of the author's four short 1841 novels, "The Playfellow".
The scene is set in Lincolnshire, a part of England much of which is flat and prone to flooding by the sea. It was drained in the 1600s by Dutch engineers by the creation of drains and sea defences. To this day part of the county is called Holland. After the draining the land was leased by the King to various settlers from overseas, among whom were the Linacres, the hero-family of this book. The King's enemies break down the sea defences, and the land is flooded, with haystacks, mills and barns floating away, farm animals drowning, and everyone in great peril. By various mishaps the three Linacre children and a boy from a roguish nomadic family, are deprived of the Linacre mother and father just when they most need them, and find themselves in the care of Ailwin, the strong and sturdy maid-of-all-work. Before they can get reunited with the parents, Geordie, the weakly two-year-old, dies, and they have various struggles for survival, with foul water killing many of the animals they would rely on for food. At last help comes in the form of the local pastor, who has enlisted the aid of some men to row him to wherever he is needed.
This book is pretty strong reading, and probably more of a tragedy than any other category.
Harriet Martineau, 1802-1876
English writer, sister of James Martineau, born in Norwich, the daughter of a textile manufacturer of Huguenot descent. In 1821 she wrote her first article for the (unitarian) Monthly Repository; and then produced Devotional Exercises for the Use of Young Persons (1826), and short stories about machinery and wages. Her next book was Addresses for the Use of Families (1826). In 1829 the failure of the house in which she, her mother, and her sisters had placed their money, obliged her to earn her living. In 1832 she became a successful author through writing tales based on economic or legal ideas, in Illustrations of Political Economy, followed by Poor Laws and Paupers Illustrated (1833-34), and settled in London. After a visit to the U.S.A. (1834-36) she published Society in America, and a novel Deerbrook in 1839, and a second novel The Hour and the Man about Toussaint lâOuverture. From 1839 to 1844 she was an invalid at Tynemouth, but recovered through mesmerism, (her subsequent belief in which alienated many friends), and made her home at Ambleside in 1845, the year of Forest and Game-law Tales. After visiting Egypt and Palestine she issued Eastern Life (1848). In 1851, in conjunction with H G Atkinson she published Letters on the Laws of Manâs Social Nature which was so agnostic that it gave much offence; and in 1853 she translated and condensed Comteâs Philosophie Positive. She also wrote much for the daily and weekly press and the larger reviews.
Taken with acknowledgement from the 1990 Chamberâs Biographical Dictionary.
A PDF of scans and an HTML version of this book are provided. We also provide a plain TEXT version and full instructions for using this to make your own audiobook. To find these click on the PDF, HTML or TXT links on the left.
These transcriptions of books by various nineteenth century authors of instructive books for teenagers, were made during the period 1997 to the present day by Athelstane e-Books. Most of the books are concerned with the sea, but in any case all will give a good idea of life in the nineteenth century, and sometimes earlier than that. This of course includes attitudes prevalent at the time, but frowned upon nowadays.
We used a Hewlett-Packard scanner, a Plustek OpticBook 3600 scanner or a Nikkon Coolpix 5700 camera to scan the pages. We then made a pdf which we used to assist with editing the OCRed text.
To make a text version we used TextBridge Pro 98 or ABBYY Finereader 7 or 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
