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American Literature — page 40
3,151 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 40 of 66.
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 11: Antepenultimata
Ambrose Bierce
The nineteenth-century satirist turns his gaze toward the fraying fabric of American life, offering a collection of essays that dissects the political, social, and moral decay of a nation rushing toward its own obsolescence.
The Haunted Pajamas
Francis Perry Elliott
A gentleman’s mundane life is upended by a mysterious, unwanted gift from China that triggers a series of surreal, identity-blurring transformations.
The New Adam and Eve (From "Mosses from an Old Manse")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
In a world suddenly emptied of humanity, two new, unspoiled beings emerge to wander through the silent, abandoned ruins of human civilization. Their first day becomes a profound reflection on the wreckage left behind by our predecessors.
Andy Gordon
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
The virtuous youth overcomes poverty and deceit through unyielding integrity. This classic tale follows a determined boy whose character serves as his ultimate ladder to success.
Miss Billy
Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
An orphaned teenager unexpectedly finds herself the ward of five bachelor brothers, sparking a transformative series of romantic misunderstandings that reshape the lives of everyone in the household.
My Mark Twain (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance)
William Dean Howells
The most intimate portrait of an American icon ever written, this account captures the humanity of a giant behind the mask of the humorist. It is a work of deep friendship, unvarnished and profoundly moving.
Poems
Alan Seeger
This collection offers a rare, intimate look at the transition from romantic idealism to the grim reality of the First World War. It preserves the voice of a young poet who traded the life of a Parisian wanderer for the mud of the trenches, capturing both the beauty of his youth and the finality of his sacrifice.
Rachel: A Play in Three Acts
Angelina Weld Grimké
A young woman’s vow to be a mother to the world’s children shatters when she discovers the brutal reality of the racism they will inherit.
Shadow Mountain
Dane Coolidge
A young engineer returns to a dying Nevada mining camp to claim his fortune, only to find himself entangled in a dangerous web of local feuds, hidden tungsten deposits, and a woman who refuses to play by the rules.
Skull-face
Robert E. (Robert Ervin) Howard
HOOK A desperate man, enslaved by a drug-peddling sorcerer, must confront a prehistoric horror rising from the depths of the ocean to enslave the modern world.
Teddy: Her Book: A Story of Sweet Sixteen
Anna Chapin Ray
A spirited, imaginative sixteen-year-old navigates the complexities of family life, an unexpected friendship, and the quiet, fierce ambition to make her mark on the world.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 03, January, 1858: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
This January 1858 issue of a prestigious literary magazine gathers contemporary essays, scientific reporting, and fiction to capture the intellectual pulse of the mid-nineteenth century. It serves as a time capsule of an era grappling with rapid social, scientific, and aesthetic change.
The Birds' Christmas Carol
Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
A fragile, golden-haired child born on Christmas Day transforms the lives of her family and neighbors through her boundless capacity for love and her quiet, unwavering courage.
The Celebrity, Complete
Winston Churchill
An aspiring lawyer finds his quiet life upended when an old acquaintance arrives, masking his true identity behind the fame of a celebrated novelist.
The Courtship of Miles Standish:: With Suggestions for Study and Notes
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A rough-hewn soldier sends his shy clerk to woo a woman in his stead, only for the clerk to find his own heart entangled in the errand. This classic narrative explores the tension between duty, unspoken longing, and the courage to speak one’s truth.
The False Gods
George Horace Lorimer
A hard-boiled reporter chases the scoop of a lifetime, only to find himself trapped in a web of Egyptian relics, dark secrets, and a woman who may be more than human.
The Golden House
Charles Dudley Warner
The quest for meaning in a gilded age often leads to empty rooms, yet those who seek wealth as a shield against life’s fragility frequently find it to be a hollow armor.
The House of Torchy
Sewell Ford
A sharp-witted New York City couple navigates the complexities of early married life, blending domestic adjustments with high-stakes corporate maneuvering and patriotic duty during the First World War.
The New Penelope, and Other Stories and Poems
Frances Fuller Victor
HOOK This collection of stories and poetry captures the raw, precarious spirit of Pacific Coast frontier life, where social norms falter and individual survival remains a constant, hard-won struggle.
Three People
Pansy
This is a moral tale of three disparate lives—a wealthy heir, a homeless boy, and a neglected soul—colliding in the pursuit of sobriety and purpose. It is a story of how small acts of faith and the discipline of a "pledge" can fundamentally reconstruct a human life.
Aunt Jo's scrap-bag, Volume 4
Louisa May Alcott
A collection of stories celebrates the transition from childhood curiosity to purposeful, compassionate adulthood. These vignettes capture the quiet struggles and small triumphs of girls and boys finding their way in a rapidly changing world.
For Woman's Love
Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
A self-made governor and his childhood sweetheart face a brutal separation on their wedding day, triggering a long, complex journey toward truth and reconciliation.
Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches
Joel Chandler Harris
These sketches capture the quiet, often tragic textures of life in post-Civil War Georgia, where the echoes of conflict and the weight of history press heavily upon ordinary people. The book moves through a series of interconnected narratives, blending local color with an unflinching look at the social scars of a…
Gaslight Sonatas
Fannie Hurst
Fannie Hurst captures the quiet, crushing weight of urban poverty through the lens of women struggling to maintain their dignity amid the "five-in-a-room morality" of the early twentieth-century city. These stories illuminate the hidden, atomic lives of clerks, shopgirls, and widowed mothers, revealing the fragile…
Helen Grant's Schooldays
Amanda M. Douglas
This narrative follows a bright, ambitious young woman as she escapes the stifling limitations of rural drudgery to pursue a formal education, eventually finding her own voice and purpose.
Judge Elbridge
Opie Percival Read
A retired judge faces the shattering realization that his own flesh and blood has betrayed him, only to discover that the machinery of justice is less powerful than the capacity to forgive.
Judith of Blue Lake Ranch
Jackson Gregory
A headstrong young woman inherits a vast cattle ranch, only to find it beset by saboteurs, forcing her to rely on a mysterious, hardened horse foreman to survive the wilderness.
Mr. Incoul's Misadventure
Edgar Saltus
HOOK A wealthy man of quiet habits marries a young woman whose heart belongs to another, setting the stage for a cold, calculated revenge that unfolds in the shadows of European high society.
Quarter-Back Bates
Ralph Henry Barbour
A talented high school athlete discovers that prep-school success requires more than raw ability; it demands the humility to learn, the discipline to follow orders, and the character to weather his own mistakes.
Questionable Shapes
William Dean Howells
In a world of flickering shadows and half-truths, a group of intellectuals grapples with the thin, permeable veil between the physical realm and the unexplained. These are not ghost stories of terror, but of the psyche’s strange, persistent reach toward what lies beyond.
Talbot's Angles
Amy Ella Blanchard
A young woman’s quiet life in the Maryland countryside is upended when a mysterious stranger arrives, claiming an ancestral right to her family’s historic home.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 120, October, 1867: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics
Various
This issue of a venerable American literary magazine offers a sprawling, intellectual window into the nineteenth-century mind, capturing the era’s urgent debates, travel obsessions, and evolving narrative styles.
The Inventions of the Idiot
John Kendrick Bangs
A man of relentless, whimsical imagination holds court at a boardinghouse, proposing bizarre solutions to everyday inconveniences. His inventive spirit turns the breakfast table into a theater of witty, argumentative debate.
The Red Debt: Echoes from Kentucky
Everett MacDonald
A young man is caught in a violent cycle of mountain vengeance, his life shaped by the blood-debts of his kin and the haunting, rugged wilderness of Kentucky.
A Night in Acadie
Kate Chopin
Restless hearts search for freedom, duty, or love across the quiet bayous, bustling towns, and sun-bathed fields of nineteenth-century Louisiana.
Carolyn of the Corners
Ruth Belmore Endicott
Sent away from her city home when her parents are reported lost at sea, a little girl and her faithful mongrel arrive in a small rural town, where her unconscious warmth slowly melts the long-held grudges of her guardians and neighbours.
Cy Whittaker's Place
Joseph Crosby Lincoln
The Cy Whittaker place is more than a house; it is the center of a life that finally feels like home. This novel captures the quiet, salt-sprayed rhythm of Cape Cod at the turn of the century, following a retired sea captain who finds unexpected purpose through an unlikely adoption. It is a story of community,…
From the Housetops
George Barr McCutcheon
A young woman chooses security over love, marrying a dying millionaire to secure her future, only to find herself trapped in a haunting moral struggle alongside the surgeon who once hoped to be her husband.
People of the Whirlpool: From The Experience Book of a Commuter's Wife
Mabel Osgood Wright
A gentle, observant woman living in a changing countryside finds her quiet life challenged by an encroaching, wealthy urban elite. This is a story of maintaining one’s roots in the face of shifting social tides.
Scorn of Women: A Play In Three Acts
Jack London
In the freeze of 1897 Dawson, an Eldorado gold king tries to run off with a Hungarian adventurer, sparking a secret web of social plotting to save a young bride's future.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics
Various
A vibrant cross-section of post-Civil War American intellectual life, capturing a nation navigating rapid industrial growth, cultural identity, and social change.
The Just and the Unjust
Vaughan Kester
A ruined man faces the gallows for a murder he did not commit, while the only people who know the truth are silenced by fear, greed, and the weight of their own past failures.
Thirty
Howard Vincent O'Brien
A dynamic idealist upends an heiress's world, challenging her gilded life and teaching her that truth is the only legacy worth fighting for.
Will Bradley, His Chap Book: An account, in the words of the dean of American typographers, of his graphic arts adventures
Will Bradley
A boyhood spent foraging for firewood in Michigan mining country leads to an extraordinary creative career shaping the visual language of twentieth-century American publishing.
Edward Fane's Rosebud (From "Twice Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A life bent out of shape by early heartbreak finds its final, uncanny purpose in the shadow of mortality.
Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World. Part 2
Mark Twain
A light-hearted American traveler traces the length of Australia by sea, rail, and carriage, marveling at its phosphorescent waters, strange wildlife, and booming frontier cities.
High Life in New York: A series of letters to Mr. Zephariah Slick, Justice of the Peace, and Deacon of the church over to Weathersfield in the state of Connecticut
Ann S. (Ann Sophia) Stephens
A guileless Connecticut farm boy encounters the absurdities of nineteenth-century Manhattan, sending back a stream of observations to his hometown deacon.
Love-Songs of Childhood
Eugene Field
A child's nocturnal imagination bridges the fragile gap between domestic warmth, wild outdoor play, and the inevitable, quiet march of growing up.