Free summaries
American Literature — page 28
3,609 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 28 of 76.
Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus
George W. (George Wilbur) Peck
A boy and his father join the circus circus workforce, turning every city and menagerie into an arena for outrageous pranks, animal stampedes, and accidental chaos.
The Little Colonel at Boarding-School
Annie F. (Annie Fellows) Johnston
Leaving behind the ease of childhood is never simple, but doing it under the eyes of an entire boarding school makes every mistake feel magnified.
Tutt and Mr. Tutt
Arthur Cheney Train
In a bustling early-twentieth-century New York, a tall, cigar-smoking courtroom veteran and his cunning partner wield every legal trick and human sympathy to save ordinary people from an unfeeling, hypocritical justice system.
Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes
Ella Cheever Thayer
A young telegraph operator finds her secluded workroom transformed into a stage for flirtation, identity confusion, and unpredictable nineteenth-century romance when a distant key taps back.
Bonaventure: A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana
George Washington Cable
A quiet soul shapes his own destiny and transforms a whole parish through sheer devotion to learning, duty, and love.
Over Here
Edgar A. (Edgar Albert) Guest
A country's spirit reveals itself not on the distant battlefield, but in the quiet homes, empty bedrooms, and backyards left behind by those who went to fight.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
This Civil War–era periodical captures a nation in midstream through travelogues, social critiques, scientific treatises, and eyewitness accounts of a changing social order.
The Bell-Ringer of Angel's, and Other Stories
Bret Harte
California mining camps, Scottish estates, and haunted haciendas form the backdrop of these short stories, where rough-edged pioneers, eccentric lovers, and quiet hypocrites navigate love, deception, and sudden loss.
The Penalty
Gouverneur Morris
A maimed mastermind schemes in the New York underworld while a gifted young sculptress unwittingly offers him a path to transformation.
Adrienne Toner: A Novel
Anne Douglas Sedgwick
When an enigmatic American heiress steps into an aristocratic English family, her radiant self-certainty disrupts lives, dismantles marriages, and ultimately transforms the quiet London cynical scholar who set out to study her.
Anthem
Ayn Rand
A young man raised in a collectivist dystopia where even the word "I" is forbidden discovers electric light and flees into the wilderness to claim his own identity.
Iole
Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
In a satire of the Arts and Crafts movement, an eccentric patriarch raises eight daughters on Greek grammar and pink bloomers, only to watch them fall for pragmatic suitors.
My Friend Annabel Lee
Mary MacLane
A miniature Japanese statue becomes a living companion and mirror for a young woman processing her sharp, unvarnished inner life.
Nat Goodwin's Book
Nat. C. (Nathaniel Carll) Goodwin
A legendary American comedian pulls back the velvet curtain to deliver a witty, unsparing, and nostalgic tour of nineteenth-century theatrical life.
Red-Robin
Jane Abbott
An orphaned, red-haired girl with a physical limp transforms a somber mill town through quiet courage, steadfast loyalty, and an unshakeable belief in human kindness.
The Fall of a Nation: A Sequel to the Birth of a Nation
Dixon, Thomas, Jr.
Complacency and naive pacifism leave a mighty republic defenseless, inviting swift, brutal conquest by an imperial coalition that subdues the nation until a clandestine rebellion rises to reclaim American freedom.
The Fiend's Delight
Ambrose Bierce
This darkly comic collection dismantles 1873 American morality through unsparing satire, macabre short stories, cynical essays, and faux-journalistic items.
The Little Colonel
Annie F. (Annie Fellows) Johnston
A hot-tempered little girl in post-Civil War Kentucky unwittingly walks into the lives of a estranged grandfather and a struggling family, determined to fix a broken house with sheer, stubborn affection.
Under Fire
Charles King
To survive the brutal, unforgiving Dakota frontier, a young cavalry lieutenant must brave not only Indian war-parties on the plains, but malicious rumors, treacherous officers, and a deeply troubled marriage back at the fort.
A Selection of Cartoons from Puck
Joseph Ferdinand Keppler
A ink-stained mirror held up to Late Victorian America captures the raucous machinery of Gilded Age politics, where robber barons, scheming party bosses, and idealistic reformers wrestle for the soul of a rapidly changing republic.
Elsie's Womanhood
Martha Finley
A devotion to faith, family, and country guides a gentle Southern heiress through personal trials and a nation torn apart by war.
Mary of Plymouth: A Story of the Pilgrim Settlement
James Otis
Through the observant eyes of a Pilgrim girl, the harsh reality of early New England transforms into a quiet, detailed testament to human resilience, ingenuity, and community survival.
Select Poems of Sidney Lanier
Sidney Lanier
In verse of unusual musicality, a Southern poet channels nature, love, and spiritual conviction to mount a defense of the human heart against a cold and mercenary age.
The House of a Thousand Candles
Meredith Nicholson
An eccentric grandfather’s bizarre will forces a globe-trotting rogue to live isolated in an unfinished Indiana mansion, where hidden tunnels, armed prowlers, and a high-stakes fortune await him.
The Morgesons: A Novel
Elizabeth Stoddard
A headstrong young woman in 19th-century New England defies rigid coastal traditions, surviving domestic confinement, tempestuous passions, and family tragedy to forge a uncompromising sense of self.
Felix O'Day
Francis Hopkinson Smith
A proud, ruined Irish gentleman walks the slick streets of New York, quietly searching for his lost wife while earning a humble living among antique dealers, expressmen, and parish priests.
Gargoyles
Ben Hecht
A hypocrite’s ambition and a city’s rot collide as turn-of-the-century Chicago exposes the grotesque gap between public virtue and private depravity.
The Allen House
T. S. (Timothy Shay) Arthur
A life built on hollow vanity or reckless greed will inevitably crumble, while quiet integrity yields a quiet, enduring happiness.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 95, September 1865: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
A nation catching its breath after civil war finds its voice across a landscape of domestic comedy, military recollection, and quiet philosophical debate.
The Cursed Patois: From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899
Mary Hartwell Catherwood
Two wilderness outfitters on Michigan’s Brevoort Lake take in a destitute French-Canadian widow and her child, only to find their rugged routine transformed by love.
The Grafters
Francis Lynde
A young lawyer discovers that saving the railroad he serves means destroying the corrupt political machine he once helped put into power.
The Little Brown Jug at Kildare
Meredith Nicholson
A wealthy young idler and an academic finding themselves in charge of neighboring states sounds like a recipe for chaos, especially when a notorious outlaw and two fiercely loyal daughters are involved.
The Ship-Dwellers: A Story of a Happy Cruise
Albert Bigelow Paine
In 1909, an American humorist boards a Mediterranean cruise ship, tracing the classic path of Mark Twain's early travel writing across the historic shores of the ancient world.
Forty-one Thieves: A Tale of California
Angelo Hall
A brutal stagecoach murder in the California Sierras sets off a multi-year chain of betrayal, flight, and quiet financial ruin across the American West.
Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories
Ambrose Bierce
A man walks across an open pasture under a bright afternoon sun, only to vanish into absolute nothingness mid-step before his family's eyes.
The Eagle's Shadow
James Branch Cabell
A wealthy heiress, a parade of parasitic suitors, and a mislaid fortune collide in a swift, sharp-witted romance of mistaken motives.
The Gentleman from Indiana
Booth Tarkington
A young Eastern idealist buys a struggling country newspaper in flat, sun-baked Indiana, pitting his stubborn ethics against a lawless local gang and the heart of a spirited young woman.
Three Years in Europe: Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met
William Wells Brown
This travelogue follows an escaped slave as he journeys across Europe, discovering both grand cultural monuments and true social equality abroad.
Triumph of the Egg, and Other Stories
Sherwood Anderson
In small-town Ohio and gray midwestern cities, ordinary souls attempt to break out of their emotional shells, yearning for human connection through clumsy, desperate, and often beautiful gestures.
Aurora the Magnificent
Gertrude Hall Brownell
A vibrant, unrefined American woman and a melancholic, intellectual expatriate find their mismatched worlds colliding in the sun-drenched, aristocratic landscape of Florence.
"Browne's Folly": (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
An old memory of a ruined hilltop mansion yields a meditation on human vanity, local history, and the quiet passage of time.
Clarence
Bret Harte
A man married to an older, controlling widow faces the breakdown of his marriage against the backdrop of the American Civil War.
Eight Cousins
Louisa May Alcott
A young girl finds health and belonging within a lively, sprawling family after coming to live with her eccentric uncle. This story celebrates the small, transformative power of kindness in a sheltered, affectionate home.
In the Arena: Stories of Political Life
Booth Tarkington
An old political insider's clear-eyed tour through the backrooms, saloons, and statehouses where ordinary Americans fight, fail, and bargain for power.
Jack Ballington, Forester
John Trotwood Moore
A restless soul struggles to reconcile a deep, inherited love for the natural world with the violent, inescapable demands of duty and military service.
On Horseback
Charles Dudley Warner
Two scholarly companions saddle up for a rugged equestrian journey through the remote, bridgeless mountains of the American South, where natural splendor constantly battles wretched food and punishing roads.
Sinners and Saints: A Tour Across the States and Round Them, with Three Months Among the Mormons
Phil Robinson
A nineteenth-century travelogue that captures the raw, burgeoning energy of the American West, punctuated by sharp, worldly observations and a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of the Mormon community in Utah.
The Coquette, or, The History of Eliza Wharton: A Novel: Founded on Fact
Hannah Webster Foster
The life of a young woman unravels as she balances the stability of a respectable suitor against the intoxicating, perilous charm of a known libertine. This epistolary tragedy serves as a cautionary map of the social dangers facing women in the early American republic.