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American Literature — page 15
3,373 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 15 of 71.
The Path, Vol. I.—1886-'7.: A Magazine Devoted to the Brotherhood of Humanity, Theosophy in America, and the Study of Occult Science, Philosophy, and Aryan Literature
Various
An exploration of ancient philosophies, esoteric traditions, and the untapped capacities of human consciousness offers a spiritual alternative to rigid dogmatism and materialist despair.
Understood Betsy
Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Sheltered, over-protected nine-year-old Elizabeth Ann is sent away to live with distant, practical relatives on a Vermont farm, where she unexpectedly discovers her own independence, practical capability, and quiet self-reliance.
The Complete Works of Artemus Ward (HTML edition)
Artemus Ward
A traveling showman wanders across a young, chaotic America, offering sharp-eyed observations dressed in deliberate misspellings, deadpan absurdities, and an unyielding refusal to take anyone’s solemnity at face value.
The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.)
Unknown
A rustic farmhand dodges domestic chores for a afternoon by the river, while an urban household unravels over a dinner dispute with a newly hired maid.
Death comes for the archbishop
Willa Cather
A refined French priest rides into the vast, sun-baked wilderness of the American Southwest to build a diocese, forging a quiet legacy of faith and friendship against a backdrop of ancient cultures.
The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton
A quietly lethal collection exposes the polite cruelties of high society, tracing how money, ego, and intellectual posturing dismantle human relationships.
Is Shakespeare Dead?: From My Autobiography
Mark Twain
A skeptical, funny, and deeply personal attack on the literary establishment asks how a man who left no books or letters could possibly have written the greatest plays in the English language.
Sixes and Sevens
O. Henry
A roving minstrel shoots his host’s rival, a cowboy mistakes a rat for his girl, and a Broadway rogue steals a Southern major’s identity.
Authors and Friends
Annie Fields
An intimate, unvarnished look at the private lives and quiet genius of New England’s classic literary circle.
Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven
Mark Twain
A dead sea captain races a comet through the cosmos, misses his destination, and discovers that the conventional human picture of the afterlife is completely wrong.
The Gray Angels
Nalbro Bartley
A penniless country girl with a soaring voice trades her small-town engagement for a grand-opera career, only to discover that fame without love is an empty triumph.
The Squatter and the Don: A Novel Descriptive of Contemporary Occurrences in California
María Amparo Ruiz de Burton
When a defeated Californio family tries to protect its ancestral land, an American squatter and his idealistic son force a confrontation between legal displacement and romantic duty.
New Hampshire, A Poem
Robert Frost
A quiet, stubborn pride runs through a landscape where beauty refuses to be packaged for sale and where human lives are shaped by hard soil, harsh winters, and sudden sparks of wonder.
Letters to His Children
Theodore Roosevelt
A dedicated father navigates the demands of the American presidency while sharing an unshakable, joyful bond with his growing children.
Mark Twain: A Biography. Volume III, Part 2: 1907-1910
Albert Bigelow Paine
An aging humorist faces the gathering shadows of his final years, finding solace in quiet pastimes, public adoration, and the steady companionship of a devoted biographer.
The poems of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Haunted by grief, unrequited desire, and the terrifying beauty of decay, a mind wrestles with loss through icy melodies, brooding landscapes, and analytical musings on the pure essence of art.
Hyperion
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A grieving scholar wanderlusts across Germany and Switzerland, seeking solace in old stories, long walks, and bright conversation before discovering that the only true cure for loss is turning forward to life.
Peck's Sunshine: Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun
George W. (George Wilbur) Peck
A sharp-eyed observation of Gilded Age life transforms small-town nuisances, political posturing, and domestic mishaps into enduring, slice-of-life comedy.
Poems of Nature
Henry David Thoreau
To dwell closely with nature is to trade the noisy slavery of modern ambition for a quiet, boundless realm of light and air.
Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader: Being Selections from the Chief American Writers
Benj. N. (Benjamin Nicholas) Martin
A sprawling, ambitious monument to early American thought, this expansive collection captures a young nation wrestling with its moral duties, judicial structures, historic battles, and emerging literary identity.
Excursions, and Poems: The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Volume 05 (of 20)
Henry David Thoreau
An observant traveler wanders from New England fields to Canadian fortresses, reading the landscape like an ancient text to find the wild heart hidden beneath human order.
The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 4, April, 1852
Various
A vibrant cross-section of mid-nineteenth-century intellectual life, this collection captures a culture rapidly expanding its borders in literature, global politics, science, and social commentary.
Heart of the West
O. Henry
On the dusty plains of Texas and across the snowbound cabins of the American frontier, human pride, sudden affection, and absurd misunderstandings collide in nineteen sharp vignettes.
The taste of honey
Edna Worthley Underwood
A series of intellectual sketches and literary reflections, this volume captures a life spent reading across borders, celebrating the timeless power of global poetry and prose. It serves as a defiant, scholarly homage to the art of thinking deeply.
Selections from American poetry, with special reference to Poe, Longfellow, Lowell and Whittier
Unknown
This collection serves as a historical and literary survey of American verse, documenting the evolution of a national voice from the colonial strictures of the seventeenth century to the expansive, democratic spirit of the post-Civil War era.
The Life of Bret Harte, with Some Account of the California Pioneers
Henry Childs Merwin
A quiet young clerk from the East travels to wild Gold Rush California, captures its perilous frontier life in vivid prose, and finds global fame—only to spend his final years battling debt and illness in exile.
The So-called Human Race
Bert Leston Taylor
A puckish observer of the human comedy offers a curated collection of newspaper wit, literary parody, and sharp-eyed social commentary. This assembly of brief, daily dispatches captures the transient ironies of early 20th-century life with a timeless, cynical grace.
Tik-Tok of Oz
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
A young girl and her faithful mule find themselves swept into a whirlwind of magic, where they must navigate the whims of kings and dragons to save a long-lost brother.
Options
O. Henry
Fate is rarely a straight line in the American landscape, but rather a series of unpredictable turns, small deceptions, and sudden, life-altering choices. These stories capture the fleeting moments where ordinary lives pivot toward the extraordinary.
American literary masters
Leon H. (Leon Henry) Vincent
This collection of literary portraits offers a measured, appreciative look at the nineteen pivotal figures who defined the first half-century of American letters. It serves as an essential, steady-handed survey of a formative era.
Si Klegg, Book 1: His Transformation from a Raw Recruit to a Veteran
John McElroy
A raw farm boy transforms into a hardened soldier through the gritty, humorous, and grueling realities of the American Civil War.
American Poetry, 1922: A Miscellany
Unknown
This collection captures the restless, experimental spirit of early twentieth-century American verse, offering a vibrant portrait of a generation grappling with tradition, modernity, and the persistent weight of the past.
Literary Friends and Acquaintance
William Dean Howells
The observer who shaped a generation of American letters looks back at the giants who preceded him, mapping the intersections of genius, friendship, and the quiet, fading elegance of the 19th-century literary world.
The Complete Works of Josh Billings
Josh Billings
The eccentric, phonetically misspelled observations of a rustic philosopher offer a sharp, diamond-like look at nineteenth-century American life. These brief, punchy reflections remain a masterclass in stripping away pretension to find the truth underneath.
A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass
Amy Lowell
These verses capture the fleeting intersection of human longing and the natural world, turning the internal struggle for meaning into a delicate, luminous art.
The Brick Moon, and Other Stories
Edward Everett Hale
A pioneering work of early science fiction, this collection balances speculative engineering with earnest, often whimsical meditations on the social and domestic lives of 19th-century Americans. It captures a spirit of boundless Victorian optimism, grounded in the belief that human ingenuity, bolstered by kindness,…
American Fairy Tales
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
These whimsical, subversive tales reimagine the landscape of American childhood, where magic acts as a sudden, often chaotic, intrusion into the mundane lives of ordinary people.
Hand and Ring
Anna Katharine Green
A cold-blooded murder, a web of circumstantial evidence, and a courtroom trial where the truth is buried beneath layers of obsession and legal maneuvering.
Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: a series of very plain talks on very practical politics, delivered by ex-Senator George Washington Plunkitt, the Tammany philosopher, from his rostrum—the New York County court house bootblack stand
George Washington Plunkitt
A veteran New York City politician defends his career of "honest graft," arguing that serving the public and lining one’s own pockets are perfectly compatible activities.
Cabbages and Kings
O. Henry
Life in a sleepy tropical republic proves as unpredictable as a revolving stage, where fleeting fortunes and quiet loves collide in the shadow of political upheaval.
Letters of a Traveller
William Cullen Bryant
A seasoned observer of the mid-nineteenth century turns his discerning eye toward the landscapes and social rhythms of three continents, capturing the fleeting textures of life as he encounters them.
At Home and Abroad
Margaret Fuller
This collection offers an intimate, sharp-eyed chronicle of a nineteenth-century intellectual navigating the frontiers of both the American West and a revolutionary Europe. It is a work of profound observation, blending travelogue, political commentary, and deeply personal reflection.
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
Mark Twain
This is a fictionalized memoir of a saint, told by a man who served as her secretary, page, and lifelong devotee. It captures the rise and tragic fall of a teenage peasant girl who transformed a broken nation through faith, iron will, and a singular, selfless vision.
The Europeans
Henry James
A spirited, worldly brother and sister arrive in Boston to claim their American cousins, setting a quiet, tradition-bound family on a collision course with European sophistication. This comedy of manners explores how a stagnant, rigid culture responds to the unexpected intrusion of charm, fluidity, and the…
![Cover of The Complete Works in Philosophy, Politics and Morals of the late Dr. Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 2 [of 3]](https://cdn.myebooksbuy.com/c/the-complete-works-in-philosophy-politics-and-morals-of-the-late-dr.webp)
The Complete Works in Philosophy, Politics and Morals of the late Dr. Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 2 [of 3]
Benjamin Franklin
A polymath’s restless curiosity shines through these pages, capturing a mind that probes the mechanics of nature and the complexities of human society with equal rigor. These collected letters and papers reveal the experimental spirit of the Enlightenment.
Poems by Emily Dickinson, Series Two
Emily Dickinson
The world is a vast, shivering mystery, and these verses are the needle-points that prick through the fabric of the ordinary to reach the absolute. They offer a rare, unflinching look at what it means to be human in the face of the infinite.
Famous funny fellows
William Montgomery Clemens
This collection offers a rare, candid glimpse into the late nineteenth-century American landscape of newspaper humor, charting the lives of the figures who defined a burgeoning genre of wit. It serves as a vital historical record of the era’s literary culture.
Arrowsmith
Sinclair Lewis
A relentless, searching portrait of a man torn between the integrity of scientific discovery and the crushing demands of professional ambition, social climbing, and personal loss.