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American Literature — page 22
4,848 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 22 of 101.
The blue wall
Richard Washburn Child
A physician peers past a physical partition and into the troubled human minds hidden behind it, uncovering a web of secret obsession, addiction, and long-buried guilt.
The Girls of Silver Spur Ranch
Grace MacGowan Cooke
Courageous sisters, an absent soldier father, and a neighbor's relentless pride converge in a spirited tale of rural Texas resolve during the Spanish-American War.
A Study of Hawthorne
George Parsons Lathrop
An elusive American master is brought into focus by a fellow writer who balances psychological insight, literary genealogy, and historical context to illuminate the genius behind New England's most enduring, dark-hued romances.
Perkins of Portland: Perkins The Great
Ellis Parker Butler
An eccentric copywriter and a pragmatic partner hawk ridiculous products across America, turning raw enthusiasm and relentless catchphrases into a booming empire.
Eugene Field, a Study in Heredity and Contradictions
Slason Thompson
A genius of absurd humor and tender verse lives a life as unpredictable, contradiction-filled, and utterly rebellious as his own stories.
Dawn O'Hara: The Girl Who Laughed
Edna Ferber
A spirited journalist navigates love, loss, and self-discovery in the charming chaos of boarding house life.
The Humour of America: Selected, with an Introduction and Index of American Humorists
Unknown
A sprawling, kaleidoscopic tour through early American comic literature captures the raw, self-deprecating wit and vivid regional accents of a growing nation.
The Flirt
Booth Tarkington
A captivating tale of love, deception, and societal intrigue set in early 20th-century America.
The Lions of the Lord: A Tale of the Old West
Harry Leon Wilson
A soul's desperate search for grace yields to the cold demands of fanatical obedience along the trail to Zion.
Mam'selle Jo
Harriet T. (Harriet Theresa) Comstock
A woman of quiet strength discovers an orphaned girl and protects her from a haunting past, ultimately finding that the road of life leads to unexpected, late-blooming companionship.
Miss Billy's Decision
Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
An engagement meant to usher in a lifetime of harmony founders when a young woman mistakes her fiancé’s artistic focus for growing indifference and decides that true love requires sacrificing her own happiness to set him free.
Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty
John William De Forest
A Southern belle’s fiery allegiance to the Confederacy is tested when war uproots her life, forcing a choice between the dazzling promises of a dashing officer and the steady devotion of a quiet Northern soldier.
Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920)
Carl Van Doren
An ambitious attempt to chart the modern novel as it moves from sentimental regionalism into the raw, unsparing grip of naturalism.
Enough rope: poems
Dorothy Parker
Underneath a veneer of shimmering light verse and jaunty meter lies a sharp, unyielding inventory of human romantic disillusionment, self-mockery, and emotional survival.
Carlyle's laugh, and other surprises
Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Literary portraits drawn from personal memory illuminate the eccentricities, sudden laughter, and quiet discipline of the nineteenth century’s most vital authors.
Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 2, August 1852
Various
This nineteenth-century miscellany gathers the voices of poets, storytellers, and observers, offering a panoramic view of the Victorian era’s artistic and intellectual preoccupations.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics
Various
This curated collection of essays, fiction, and cultural commentary captures the intellectual pulse of the United States at a volatile moment in the mid-nineteenth century. It serves as a sophisticated time capsule of the post-Civil War American mind.
The Business of Life
Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
Wealth, independence, and the quiet weight of old mistakes collide in this lush Gilded Age romance.
The Amazing Interlude
Mary Roberts Rinehart
The stage of life is rarely as permanent as it seems, and for one quiet woman, the upheaval of a global conflict reveals that her true purpose lies not in the safety of home, but in the heart of the storm.
The Conquest of America: A Romance of Disaster and Victory, U.S.A., 1921 A.D
Cleveland Moffett
A chilling vision of a defenseless nation forced to its knees, this work serves as a frantic, cautionary call for the United States to abandon its isolationism and embrace military preparedness.
The Golden Slipper, and Other Problems for Violet Strange
Anna Katharine Green
A young socialite moonlights as a brilliant private investigator, navigating the shadows of New York’s elite to solve crimes that the police cannot touch.
Margaret Smith's Journal, and Tales and Sketches, Complete: Volume V of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier
Colonial New England emerges from the shadows of history through a young woman’s observant eyes, blending the austere realities of Puritan life with the lyrical beauty of an untamed wilderness.
Memoirs of an American Prima Donna
Clara Louise Kellogg
A celebrated American opera star recounts her rise from a sheltered upbringing to international stages, offering a candid, firsthand look at the rigors and eccentricities of the nineteenth-century musical world.
The Third Circle
Frank Norris
This collection of short stories captures the raw, kinetic energy of turn-of-the-century life, moving restlessly between the foggy wharves of San Francisco and the mythic, wind-swept cliffs of ancient Iceland.
Aunt Phillis's Cabin
Mary H. (Mary Henderson) Eastman
This work offers an intentional counter-narrative to the abolitionist literature of the mid-nineteenth century, presenting a defense of the Southern social order through the lens of domestic fiction. It serves as a significant historical artifact, illustrating the arguments used by slaveholders to justify the…
Confession
William Gilmore Simms
HOOK A man’s corrosive pride and agonizing insecurity lead him to destroy the very domestic peace he most deeply craves. This is a harrowing portrait of the ruinous power of a suspicious mind.
The Children's Longfellow: Told in Prose
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
This collection breathes new life into classic American verse by recasting iconic narrative poems as accessible, evocative stories. It invites readers to experience the sweeping reach of legend and the quiet depth of human endurance through prose.
The Song of the Wolf
Frank Mayer
This novel depicts a rugged, high-stakes collision between the refined sensibilities of the East and the raw, dangerous code of the Colorado frontier. It is a story of obsession, transformation, and the eventual surrender to a simpler, more profound existence.
Toward the Gulf
Edgar Lee Masters
This collection of verse is a restless, intellectual pilgrimage through the American landscape and the history of human longing. It is a work of candid observation, tracing the arc from the simple joys of a summer boat trip to the existential weight of a mind confronting its own limitations.
Europe Revised
Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury) Cobb
** Eschewing the dry, fact-laden approach of traditional guidebooks, this account offers a humorous, irreverent, and deeply personal exploration of European travel at the dawn of the twentieth century.
Buttered Side Down: Stories
Edna Ferber
Life rarely concludes with the neat, fairy-tale resolution of a storybook ending. These vignettes capture the quiet, unvarnished reality of ordinary people navigating the friction between their dreams and the world they actually inhabit.
Coniston
Winston Churchill
A master of backroom influence meets his match in the purity of a young woman’s integrity. This sprawling, atmospheric portrait explores how the machinery of power operates in the shadows of a changing nation.
Sweet Cicely
Marietta Holley
A sharp-witted farm wife navigates the absurdities of nineteenth-century politics while witnessing the heartbreaking toll that legal injustice takes on a young mother.
The Moneychangers
Upton Sinclair
A young Southern lawyer arrives in New York City, only to find himself ensnared in the ruthless machinery of Wall Street, where the lines between high finance and high crime vanish.
'Me--Smith'
Caroline Lockhart
A rugged, enigmatic drifter finds his solitary life upended when he infiltrates a remote ranch, only to realize that his attempts to command his own destiny are colliding with forces beyond his control.
When a man's a man
Harold Bell Wright
The definition of manhood is tested against the unforgiving landscape of the American West. A stranger sheds his past to find redemption, proving that true strength lies not in social status, but in character and service.
Current superstitions
Unknown
The wisdom of the past lives on in the casual habits and whispered warnings that still shape our daily lives. These fragments of folklore capture the echoes of an older world, preserved before they vanish from modern memory.
Much Ado About Peter
Jean Webster
Peter, an observant and quick-witted groom at the sprawling Willowbrook estate, navigates the social hierarchies of a bustling early 20th-century household while orchestrating the lives of his employers and peers with equal parts meddling and charm.
Stories in Light and Shadow
Bret Harte
These tales explore the shifting boundaries between the American frontier and the wider world, tracing lives caught in the tension between rugged independence and the weight of history.
Cobwebs from an Empty Skull
Ambrose Bierce
This collection of sketches and fables delights in subverting expectations, offering a dark, witty, and deeply skeptical tour through the absurdities of life and language.
London Films
William Dean Howells
An aging traveler arrives in London, seeking to capture the shifting, atmospheric impressions of a city that feels both intimately familiar and eternally beyond his full comprehension.
Stepping Heavenward
E. (Elizabeth) Prentiss
A woman tracks her lifelong journey toward spiritual maturity, documenting the friction between her impulsive nature and her desire for a quieter, more sanctified life. This intimate diary reveals the private struggles behind the domestic ideal.
The Book of Susan: A Novel
Lee Wilson Dodd
The life of an orphan is rarely a fairy tale, but for one young girl, a chance encounter with a lonely man in a New Haven garage marks the beginning of an extraordinary, self-made education.
The Function of the Poet, and Other Essays
James Russell Lowell
The poet acts as a vital interpreter of human nature, reclaiming the lost innocence of our childhood and transforming the dusty, ordinary path of daily life into a landscape of enduring beauty.
The Man in Lower Ten
Mary Roberts Rinehart
A man’s quiet, predictable life is shattered when a gruesome murder occurs in the sleeper car where he is traveling. This classic mystery follows his desperate struggle to prove his innocence against a mounting pile of damning circumstantial evidence.
Vision House
C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson
Marriage as a high-stakes transaction leads two unlikely partners into a web of ambition, pride, and hidden motives. Beneath the veneer of British aristocratic society and the dramatic atmosphere of the American West, a young actress and a "bounder" of a soldier fight to redefine their futures.
A Traveler at Forty
Theodore Dreiser
An American writer sets out to encounter the Old World, armed only with a notebook, an insatiable curiosity, and a companion who serves as his worldly guide through the intricate, often melancholic landscapes of early 20th-century Europe.
Bunch Grass: A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch
Horace Annesley Vachell
HOOK This collection captures the vanishing spirit of the California frontier, where the law was often a matter of personal resolve and the landscape itself demanded a brutal kind of survival.