Free summaries
American Literature — page 17
831 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 17 of 18.
Baled Hay: A Drier Book than Walt Whitman's "Leaves o' Grass"
Bill Nye
A collection of sketches and observations, these dispatches from the American frontier serve as a dry, irreverent antidote to the earnest sentimentality of their time. They capture the absurdities of daily life with a sharp, journalistic edge.
Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant: Household Edition
William Cullen Bryant
Nature serves as both a sanctuary and a mirror for the human experience in this collection of verse, where the passage of time is measured against the enduring, indifferent beauty of the woods and streams. It is a meditation on mortality, finding comfort in the belief that the individual life is part of a grand,…
The Road
Jack London
A restless spirit recounts life on the American rails, offering an unflinching, visceral look at the desperate, wandering world of the nineteenth-century tramp.
The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II)
Henry James
An intense psychological struggle unfolds in post-Civil War Boston, where a rigid, reform-minded spinster and a traditionalist Southern lawyer compete for the heart and future of a gifted young orator.
Three Soldiers
John Dos Passos
The story of an artist caught in the grinding gears of a global conflict, this work explores the slow destruction of the individual spirit by the machinery of war. It captures the haunting realization that some systems are designed to erase the very people they recruit.
The American scene
Henry James
Returning to his native land after a quarter-century of absence, a seasoned observer traverses the United States, documenting the shifting currents of a society defined by rapid growth, industrial ambition, and the relentless erasure of the past.
An International Episode
Henry James
Two young, titled Englishmen visit America, only to find themselves captivated by the charm of a spirited Bostonian who remains unfazed by their traditional social hierarchies.
Pictures and Stories from Uncle Tom's Cabin
Unknown
A mother’s desperate flight across frozen waters and a faithful man’s journey through profound sorrow reveal the human cost of a nation’s most grievous sin.
Parodies of the works of English & American authors, vol. I
Unknown
This collection assembles the sharpest satirical retorts to the literary giants of the Victorian era. It proves that no poem is too famous to escape the mockery of a clever critic with a pen.
Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A comprehensive collection of American literary history, this catalog preserves the rhythmic verse, epic translations, and narrative storytelling that defined a century of poetic achievement.
Initial Studies in American Letters
Henry A. (Henry Augustin) Beers
Tracing the evolution of a national voice, this survey maps the transformation of American writing from colonial theological tracts to the diverse regional and political voices of the nineteenth century.
The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan: As Told in the Camps of the White Pine Lumbermen for Generations During Which Time the Loggers Have Pioneered the Way Through the North Woods from Maine to California
William B. Laughead
The ultimate American giant, this legendary woodsman shapes the continent with his axe, his wits, and a blue ox of impossible proportions. He is the mythic embodiment of the frontier, where every hardship is met with an even taller tale.
International Short Stories: English
Unknown
These diverse tales capture the grit, humor, and shadows of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, offering a window into the varied storytelling traditions of the British Isles.
The Night-Born
Jack London
This collection of short stories explores the thin, often permeable boundary between civilized restraint and the primal, predatory nature lurking within the human spirit. Through settings ranging from the high-society clubs of San Francisco to the brutal, unforgiving landscapes of the Klondike and the boxing rings…
Essays Before a Sonata
Charles Ives
These are the meditations of a visionary composer, reflecting on the profound, untamable spirit of the American Transcendentalists and the eternal struggle to translate the soul’s deepest intuitions into the fragile language of art.
Seeing Things at Night
Heywood Broun
These essays capture the restless, wry spirit of a journalist wandering through the theater, the nursery, and the city streets, finding adventure in the mundane and absurdity in the high-minded.
Beautiful Joe: An Autobiography
Marshall Saunders
A scarred, mistreated dog finds safety in a loving home, where he learns the quiet power of human kindness and becomes a witness to the interconnected lives of all creatures.
On Secret Service: Detective-Mystery Stories Based on Real Cases Solved by Government Agents
William Nelson Taft
The federal agent is a quiet hunter, operating in the shadows of the American capital to untangle webs of deceit that threaten the nation. These accounts reveal the meticulous, often lonely labor behind the badge.
Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van: Winkle
Charles Burke
The weary traveler wakes from a two-decade slumber to find his village transformed, his wife gone, and his own life a ghost story whispered by strangers. This enduring American classic captures the poignant bewilderment of a man out of time.
The Greatest English Classic: A Study of the King James Version of the Bible and Its Influence on Life and Literature
Cleland Boyd McAfee
The King James Version is not merely a religious text; it is the bedrock of the English language and a defining force in Western history. Explore the profound literary and cultural legacy of this classic.
The festival
H. P. (Howard Phillips) Lovecraft
A solitary traveler returns to an ancestral, fog-shrouded New England town to participate in a forbidden, centuries-old Yuletide ritual. What he discovers beneath the earth challenges the very boundaries of his sanity and existence.
The Lamplighter
Maria S. (Maria Susanna) Cummins
A young girl escapes a life of neglect to find sanctuary in the kindness of strangers, discovering that even the darkest streets can be illuminated by the warmth of a steady, guiding light.
The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays: 1909
Ambrose Bierce
These acerbic, sharply observed essays dismantle the pretenses of American public life, politics, and morality at the turn of the twentieth century. They remain a formidable masterclass in using precise, biting prose to challenge conventional wisdom.
Among My Books. First Series
James Russell Lowell
A refined exploration of literary heritage, this collection invites readers to re-examine the giants of verse and thought through the lens of a critic who prizes genuine insight over academic convention.
The Spider's Web
Reginald Wright Kauffman
A young idealist arrives in New York seeking to save the nation, only to find himself trapped in the intricate, crushing machinery of political and corporate corruption.
Negro workaday songs
Howard Washington Odum
This study gathers the itinerant music and hard-luck blues of early twentieth-century laborers, documenting a restless, traveling population through the songs they sang on chain gangs, railroads, and construction sites.
A Pagan of the Hills
Charles Neville Buck
HOOK A mountain woman rejects the traditional constraints of her gender, navigating a treacherous landscape of floods, outlaws, and rival suitors with the steely independence of a forest deity.
All the Sad Young Men
F. Scott (Francis Scott) Fitzgerald
This collection of short stories documents the quiet, often devastating friction between youthful ambition and the inevitable hardening of the adult soul. It captures a generation caught between the remnants of an old world and the hollow, shimmering promises of a new one.
Let's Get Together
Isaac Asimov
A century of fragile peace rests upon a delicate, global stalemate. When a young, suspicious agent arrives with news that the enemy has infiltrated the nation with humanoid robots, the balance of power teeters on the brink of total annihilation.
Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner
Charles Dudley Warner
The observant wit of a nineteenth-century essayist meets the quiet frustrations of daily life in this expansive collection. Here, the humdrum of gardening and the absurdity of social conventions are laid bare with sophisticated, gentle humor.
The Crux: A Novel
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
A young woman discovers that the man she loves carries a venereal disease, forcing a painful confrontation with the hidden dangers beneath traditional courtship. This narrative serves as a stark, urgent warning about the consequences of social silence.
The Life of David Belasco
William Winter
A meticulous chronicler of the American stage captures the life of a seminal theatrical pioneer, detailing a relentless pursuit of art across the shifting landscapes of nineteenth-century drama.
Letters and social aims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The pursuit of a meaningful life requires balancing the practical demands of the material world with the lofty, often elusive, requirements of the human soul. This collection of essays serves as a meditation on how to navigate that tension with integrity.
Prejudices, second series
H. L. (Henry Louis) Mencken
A relentless observer of the American scene, this collection dissects the national psyche with the precision of a surgeon and the wit of a barroom brawler. It offers a provocative, unsparing audit of a culture struggling to reconcile its democratic ideals with its persistent anti-intellectualism.
Jennie Gerhardt: A Novel
Theodore Dreiser
A young woman’s life is defined by the rigid social codes of her era, as her genuine, self-sacrificing love for a man of status becomes a burden she is forced to carry alone.
The Black Swan at Home and Abroad
Anonymous
Hope is the primary theme of this biographical sketch, which traces the path of a woman born into bondage who rose to perform for royalty through the sheer power of her voice.
The Poets' Lincoln: Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President
Unknown
This collection gathers the lyrical echoes of a nation’s grief, preserving the diverse ways poets attempted to capture the stature of a man who belonged to history. It serves as a bridge between the living memory of a president and the mythic figure he became.
Hunting License
James V. McConnell
Humanity has engineered a sport so refined, so carefully regulated, that even its monsters carry clipboards.
Confidence
Henry James
A gifted young observer agrees to evaluate a friend’s potential bride, only to misjudge her character, derail the romance, and eventually discover that his own guarded heart has fallen hopelessly in love with her.
Passages from the English Notebooks, Volume 1
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A quiet American observer wanders through Victorian England, recording the subtle textures of ancient stone, damp cathedrals, and unexpected human grace.
The Expressman and the Detective
Allan Pinkerton
A stolen fortune, a web of lies, and a pursuit across the nineteenth-century American South.
Mark Twain's Letters
Mark Twain
Self-taught newspaperman, world traveler, husband, and tireless humorist, the writer behind these pages lives at a breathless sprint, firing off letters between lecture stages, steamboats, and family hearths.
Poems By a Little Girl
Hilda Conkling
A child’s spontaneous words, caught in transit by her listening mother, open a direct line to the unedited, luminous imagination of early youth.
Silver Pitchers: and Independence, a Centennial Love Story
Louisa May Alcott
An earnest girl swears off temperance-defying suitors, an idealist sees his utopia collapse in the mud, and an artist weds his bride with century-old relics.
Fanny Herself
Edna Ferber
A small-town girl raised in the bustling ecosystem of her widowed mother's dry-goods store wrestles with a fierce drive for commercial success before reclaiming her creative spirit.
Household Papers and Stories
Harriet Beecher Stowe
A warm, shrewd study of mid-nineteenth-century American domestic life reveals that true home-making relies far more on thoughtful taste and human kindness than on costly display.
Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
An expansive map of poetic and prose works traces a lifelong commitment to capturing the spirit of a nation, its people, and the human soul.
Violets and Other Tales
Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson
An intricate tapestry of nineteenth-century life, this collection weaves together poignant fiction, reflective prose, and quiet verse to capture the fragile, fleeting moments of human connection.