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American Literature — page 20
3,609 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 20 of 76.
When God Laughs, and Other Stories
Jack London
Fate plays a cold, indifferent game against human drive, mocking every attempt to outsmart starvation, mortality, and the passage of time.
A Treasury of War Poetry: British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917
Unknown
A verse anthology of the Great War turns poetry into a living chronicle, capturing the immediate, shifting emotional landscape of a world caught in unprecedented conflict.
Our Nig
Harriet E. Wilson
Abandonment and abuse frame a young free Black girl’s life in the Antebellum North, exposing the hypocrisy of a region that condemns Southern slavery while brutalizing its own vulnerable bounds.
The Story of the Other Wise Man
Henry Van Dyke
A Persian nobleman sacrifices his wealth, status, and life’s singular ambition to pursue a newly risen star, only to repeatedly surrender his sacred offerings to save the desperate along his way.
The Breath of the Gods
Sidney McCall
Two cultural traditions collide on the eve of the Russo-Japanese War as a young woman torn between East and West faces a devastating personal sacrifice.
The Fruit of the Tree
Edith Wharton
A young nurse's decision to end a friend's agonizing, fatal suffering triggers a web of moral compromises, hidden truths, and fractured loyalties that threaten every life involved.
Anne: A Novel
Constance Fenimore Woolson
Bound to her home by duty and love, a young woman steps into the world only to find her heart, her strength, and her innocence tested by society, tragedy, and murder.
Pollyanna Grows Up
Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
A orphaned young woman whose sunny optimism once transformed a whole town heads off to the city, only to discover that growing up demands a far deeper kind of joy than a child’s cheerful game can offer.
Letters from an American Farmer
J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur
A peaceful farmer finds his idyllic rural life shattered when war forces him to abandon everything he has built.
Letters on the equality of the sexes, and the condition of woman
Sarah Grimké
To reduce a human mind to a decorative ornament or a legal dependency is to corrupt both the creature and the sacred design of her existence.
One Woman's Life
Robert Herrick
A young woman navigates the shifting social currents of turn-of-the-century America, discovering that beauty and personal ambition carry unexpected costs.
Personal Poems, Complete: Volume IV of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier
Faithful memory, moral duty, and quiet spiritual reflection weave through a lifetime of verse to form a portrait of nineteenth-century New England.
The Sick-a-Bed Lady: And Also Hickory Dock, The Very Tired Girl, The Happy-Day, Something That Happened in October, The Amateur Lover, Heart of The City, The Pink Sash, Woman's Only Business
Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
A restless, spirited collection of tales where fragile health and intense, impulsive emotions collide, capturing the poignant search for connection in a world that often feels indifferent or alarmingly small.
Edgar Huntly
Charles Brockden Brown
Driven by an obsessive need to uncover the truth behind a friend's mysterious murder, a young man wanders into the nocturnal wilderness of Pennsylvania, only to lose his grip on reality in a nightmare of sleepwalking, violence, and survival.
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XI.—April, 1851—Vol. II
Various
A vibrant snapshot of mid-nineteenth-century thought, culture, and narrative craft, blending commentary on great literary figures with reportage on industrial marvels, historical drama, serial fiction, and political news.
The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast
William Cowper Brann
A fiery Texas journalist picks up his pen to tear down hypocrisy, bigotry, and corruption across the late nineteenth-century American landscape.
The Diary of a Freshman
Charles Macomb Flandrau
An idealist leaves home for Cambridge, learning that navigating college requires balancing well-meaning parental advice with the realities of friendship, academic slip-ups, and social belonging.
The Rules of the Game
Stewart Edward White
A young man goes west to build his fortune in timber, only to find that the law, the forests, and the rules of success are changing beneath his feet.
Pencillings by the Way: Written During Some Years of Residence and Travel in Europe
Nathaniel Parker Willis
A sudden, rolling sea-wave flashing green and white under a midday sun is the most gorgeously beautiful sight under heaven.
The "Genius"
Theodore Dreiser
A young man from a small Midwest town discovers an astonishing talent for art, moves to Chicago and New York, and rises rapidly, only to find his life derailed by a relentless pursuit of beauty and women.
The Rich Little Poor Boy
Eleanor Gates
A ten-year-old orphan relies on imagination, books, and pretend play to endure the harsh reality of living with an abusive foster father in a New York tenement.
Green Valley
Katharine Yirsa Reynolds
This portrait of a quiet, turn-of-the-century Yankee town captures the intimate rhythms of neighbors and the enduring pull of home with a gentle, observational grace.
Her Father's Daughter
Gene Stratton-Porter
A sharp-witted young woman maneuvers through high school rivalries and local secrets in early 20th-century California. She fights to protect her future while navigating a complex web of social expectations and personal ambition.
The Apple-Tree Table, and Other Sketches
Herman Melville
These sketches capture the restless, observational spirit of a master writer, finding profound mysteries in the mundane and the domestic. They offer a window into an era of American life defined by both rapid change and enduring human character.
The lurking fear
H. P. (Howard Phillips) Lovecraft
A nameless, creeping death haunts the Catskill Mountains, drawing an obsessed investigator into a labyrinthine nightmare of subterranean horrors. This dark narrative maps the intersection of local folklore, ancestral decay, and a primal, buried threat that defies human comprehension.
Looking Backward: 2000-1887
Edward Bellamy
The future is not a far-off dream but an architectural inevitability, waiting for humanity to choose the efficiency of cooperation over the waste of competition. This vision of a transformed world challenges us to see our own era as a primitive, transitional stage of social evolution.
Our Old Home: A Series of English Sketches
Nathaniel Hawthorne
This collection of travel essays captures a nuanced encounter between an American observer and the storied, heavy-laden atmosphere of Victorian England. It serves as a meditative bridge between two nations sharing a common, yet diverging, cultural heritage.
The Glimpses of the Moon
Edith Wharton
HOOK Two penniless socialites attempt to sustain a luxurious, cost-free marriage by relying on the generosity of their wealthy friends, only to discover that the price of such a life is their own integrity.
The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.)
Unknown
This collection serves as a vibrant, kaleidoscopic survey of American wit at the turn of the twentieth century, capturing the nation’s shifting voice through a mosaic of tall tales, satirical verse, and domestic farce. It offers a candid look at the preoccupations of an era, from the rise of the automobile and the…
Xingu
Edith Wharton
A group of self-important women, desperate to prove their intellectual worth to a famous novelist, fall victim to a clever, improvised deception.
A Mortal Antipathy
Oliver Wendell Holmes
A man suffering from a mysterious, life-threatening phobia of women searches for a cure in a quiet village. This psychological narrative explores the strange intersection of early medical theory and human vulnerability.
The Power and the Glory
Grace MacGowan Cooke
The world of the Appalachian mountains collides with the burgeoning industrial power of the valley in this story of a mountain girl’s ascent. A young woman must navigate the crushing weight of poverty and the complex expectations of social class to secure her own independence.
Ade's Fables
George Ade
These tales offer a sharp, cynical look at the American dream of the early twentieth century, exposing the social climbing and hollow ambitions of a nation obsessed with status.
At Fault
Kate Chopin
A story of collision between the rigid morality of the Creole South and the shifting, modern attitudes of St. Louis, this novel explores the wreckage left by divorce and the courage required to rebuild a life.
The Americanization of Edward Bok: The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After
Edward William Bok
A penniless immigrant boy rises to become one of the most influential editors in American history, only to discover that the ultimate achievement is knowing when to walk away from success.
The Whole Family: a Novel by Twelve Authors
William Dean Howells
This collaborative experiment in narrative perspective follows a family’s unraveling and eventual realignment, driven by the sudden, contentious engagement of its youngest daughter. It serves as a study of how a singular, private decision can act as a catalyst, exposing the long-standing frictions and secret…
Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1
Harriet Beecher Stowe
In this travelogue, a celebrated American writer recounts an 1853 journey to Great Britain, finding a landscape steeped in history and a public eager to embrace an author whose work had recently ignited a global moral firestorm.
The Patchwork Girl of Oz
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
A young boy journeys through a magical land to save his uncle, accompanied by a vibrant, living patchwork doll who speaks in riddles and rhymes.
The Salamander
Owen Johnson
The story of a young woman navigating the treacherous social landscape of early 20th-century New York, this novel dissects the intersection of ambition, desire, and the dangerous game of playing with fire.
Wolfert's Roost, and Miscellanies
Washington Irving
A weary, observant wanderer finds refuge in the quiet corners of history, sharing stories that bridge the gap between ancient legend and the evolving landscape of the American imagination.
Tales from Two Hemispheres
Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
A young Norseman leaves his home for the promise of the American republic, only to find that the transition between worlds requires a sacrifice of the self that he never fully anticipated.
The Poems of Madison Cawein, Volume 1 (of 5): Lyrics and old world idylls
Madison Julius Cawein
This collection captures the fevered, sensory richness of the Gilded Age, where the natural world is constantly transfigured into myth. It is a work of ornate, melancholic beauty, preoccupied with the heavy, lingering ghosts of both the landscape and the human heart.
A Midnight Fantasy
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
A restless midnight stroll through Boston sparks a whimsical, imaginative revision of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy. This story explores how two iconic, star-crossed figures might have found happiness if only they had chosen differently.
Fresh Leaves
Fanny Fern
This collection of sharp, satirical essays and sketches captures the vibrant, often brutal pulse of mid-19th-century American urban life with unflinching wit and a deeply empathetic heart.
Reminiscences, 1819-1899
Julia Ward Howe
A life of literary ambition and social advocacy unfolds across the nineteenth century, tracing the evolution of a prominent American voice from the quiet parlors of old New York to the front lines of reform.
The Lovely Lady
Mary Austin
A quiet man struggles to reconcile the heavy, practical demands of a life built on duty with the persistent, shimmering pull of an idealized feminine grace.
The Deep Lake Mystery
Carolyn Wells
A man is found dead in his bed, surrounded by a bizarre collection of items including a red feather duster and a crucifix, sparking a baffling investigation into his inner circle.
The haunter of the dark
H. P. (Howard Phillips) Lovecraft
A haunted church, a forbidden relic, and the creeping dread of an ancient cosmic entity converge in this tale of intellectual curiosity turned fatal. It is a chilling exploration of what happens when a mind reaches too far into the shadows of the unknown.