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An Engineer's Story

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This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

48 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2004

7 people want to read

About the author

Amelia B. Edwards

307 books69 followers
Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards (1831-1892) was an English novelist, journalist, lady traveller and Egyptologist, born to an Irish mother and a father who had been a British Army officer before becoming a banker. Edwards was educated at home by her mother, showing considerable promise as a writer at a young age. She published her first poem at the age of 7, her first story at age 12. Edwards thereafter proceeded to publish a variety of poetry, stories and articles in a large number of magazines.

Edwards' first full-length novel was My Brother's Wife (1855). Her early novels were well received, but it was Barbara's History (1864), a novel of bigamy, that solidly established her reputation as a novelist. She spent considerable time and effort on their settings and backgrounds, estimating that it took her about two years to complete the researching and writing of each. This painstaking work paid off, her last novel, Lord Brackenbury (1880), emerged as a run-away success which went to 15 editions.

In the winter of 1873–1874, accompanied by several friends, Edwards toured Egypt, discovering a fascination with the land and its cultures, both ancient and modern. Journeying southwards from Cairo in a hired dahabiyeh (manned houseboat), the companions visited Philae and ultimately reached Abu Simbel where they remained for six weeks. During this last period, a member of Edwards' party, the English painter Andrew McCallum, discovered a previously-unknown sanctuary which bore her name for some time afterwards. Having once returned to the UK, Edwards proceeded to write a vivid description of her Nile voyage, publishing the resulting book in 1876 under the title of A Thousand Miles up the Nile. Enhanced with her own hand-drawn illustrations, the travelogue became an immediate bestseller.

Edwards' travels in Egypt had made her aware of the increasing threat directed towards the ancient monuments by tourism and modern development. Determined to stem these threats by the force of public awareness and scientific endeavour, Edwards became a tireless public advocate for the research and preservation of the ancient monuments and, in 1882, co-founded the Egypt Exploration Fund (now the Egypt Exploration Society) with Reginald Stuart Poole, curator of the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum. Edwards was to serve as joint Honorary Secretary of the Fund until her death some 14 years later.

With the aims of advancing the Fund's work, Edwards largely abandoned her other literary work to concentrate solely on Egyptology. In this field she contributed to the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, to the American supplement of that work, and to the Standard Dictionary. As part of her efforts Edwards embarked on an ambitious lecture tour of the United States in the period 1889–1890. The content of these lectures was later published under the title Pharaohs, Fellahs, and Explorer (1891).

Amelia Edwards died at Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, on the 15 April 1892, bequeathing her collection of Egyptian antiquities and her library to University College London, together with a sum of £2,500 to found an Edwards Chair of Egyptology. She was buried in St Mary's Church Henbury, Bristol,

Wikipedia: Amelia B. Edwards

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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
Profile Image for Delanie Dooms.
598 reviews
June 16, 2023
One reviewer feels that this story is not "engaging". This is simply not true. Amelia B. Edwards' story is one of deep interest, with the coup de grace put in expertly.

This story is more-or-less about passion. The narrator is a passionate fellow, someone who feels deeply and acts upon those feelings, often in a very negative way. When he is seduced by an Italian flirt, he begins to dislike his long-time friend (whom he lives with, helped into the engineering profession, and set up business with), with this friend doing the same; the culmination point, as it must come, is when the flirt is outed as marrying for money, our protagonist murders his friend in a rage (because he doesn't believe it, his pride is hurt by his suspicious thoughts). The friend does not die for a year, however--all of which year is spend being taken care of by the would-be and remorseful murder. He does die, however, and is buried; the protagonist goes on a quest of self-destruction, the most horrible the better; soon, however, he wants to die and be buried near his friend, so he goes back to Italy and around that area for this purpose. He is given an assignment, a man comes up to help him assassinate the man to whom the flirt married, he says he might--and, in the process of doing in, the dead friend returns and saves them all.

In this, we see the triumph of a forgiving temper. We see a sharp delineation of our masculine protagonist, whose angry emotions cause most of the problems of the story; it is through forgiveness that things come to be done right.
Profile Image for Ydnis.
95 reviews1 follower
May 27, 2024
The Engineer
by Amelia B Edwards
Two friends since childhood become engineers and sadly fall in love with the same woman. She plays them both and ends up marrying a royal man while the two engineer friends battle each other. One gets very injured, and the other friend feels guilty, but both of them come to their senses. Engineer 1 takes care of Engineer 2 until his final days. Engineer 1 lives a sad life full of regret and never makes any human connections again. He becomes a nomad and prefers to work in harsh conditions because he doesn't feel worthy of anything good. This short story is a roller coaster of emotions.

Forgive your self
Bros before H
Profile Image for Fadi Kharoufeh.
165 reviews13 followers
March 23, 2024
“For Italy's sake, for liberty's sake”

A brilliant short story by Amelia Edwards about how 1 woman manages to get in between two male friends and break their friendship when they fight for her love.

A short poignent but tragic story for our times.

Characters: Gianetta Coneglio, Matt, Benjamin Hardy
Places: Italy
Profile Image for Julia.
138 reviews
January 10, 2024
A lot of intrigue and super short! Not sure what I think about the ending, but wonderful imagery.
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