8 h 43 minAudiobook3 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if finding your own place in the world means crossing the lines society draws around you?
In The Crucible, Mark Lee Luther centres a young woman's struggle for identity, freedom, and love. Class divides shape the world around her and raise a personal question: how much of her life belongs to the circumstances of her birth, and how much can she choose for herself?
This American novel places love against social custom, giving private feelings a wider weight. Its title names a vessel where metals face the test of fire—a vivid image for a person under pressure. The questions reach beyond romance: what does it mean to know yourself, and what does living on your own terms demand?
What you’ll discover
- A woman seeking herself Follow a struggle for identity where personal wishes meet the claims of society.
- Love across class lines Explore the tension between feelings that draw people together and customs that keep them apart.
- The weight of birth Consider how inherited standing can shape a life without answering every question about belonging.
- Freedom through choice Look beyond grand gestures to the smaller decisions through which independence takes shape.
- A test of character Discover the force of the title's central image: pressure that brings a person's nature into view.
Who will love it
For readers who love early twentieth-century American fiction, stories about class and choice, and novels centred on a woman's struggle to live on her own terms.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A novel built around a test
- Identity and the pull of society
- Love across the lines of class
- Freedom, choice and how to read it
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- 15-minute summary
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- Paperback
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Read and hear El crisol in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
El crisol
by Mark Lee Luther · 1907
A young woman faces the pressures of class and society as love and loyalty test her freedom to choose who she will be.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
The Crucible by Mark Lee Luther is an American novel from the early years of the twentieth century. It belongs to a time when fiction in English often turned to a single young woman and asked what her place in the world would be.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A novel built around a test
The word crucible means a strong container that holds material while heat tries it. Writers have long used it as a figure for a person pressed by circumstances until her real nature shows. A novel with this title promises pressure, and it promises a character who changes under it.
Readers of this kind of book should expect a story in which choices matter. A central figure meets obstacles in her family, her money, her surroundings and her own heart. Each obstacle asks her to decide who she is.
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Who was Mark Lee Luther?
Mark Lee Luther was an American novelist and magazine editor who died in 1951. He wrote popular fiction in the early twentieth century, aimed at general readers who liked stories with social and moral themes.
Is The Crucible by Mark Lee Luther the same as the Arthur Miller play?
No. Luther's The Crucible is a separate American novel from the early twentieth century. Arthur Miller's play of the same name is about the Salem witch trials and was written much later.
What kind of book is Luther's The Crucible?
It is a social novel of the early twentieth century. Books of this type follow a central character through pressures of family, money and feeling, and focus on the choices that shape her life.
The author
Mark Lee Luther
1872–? · American novelist
Mark Lee Luther was an American writer and editor who died in 1951. He wrote fiction in the early twentieth century and worked in magazine publishing. Besides The Crucible, he is known for other novels of his period, including The Henchman.
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