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American Literature — page 42
4,619 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 42 of 97.
Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis
Various
He was the beau ideal of the American reporter, a man who treated war with the eye of a novelist and lived his own life as a series of gallant, clean-cut adventures.
Bred of the Desert: A Horse and a Romance
Charles M. (Charles Marcus) Horton
This narrative traces the life of a remarkable horse from his harsh birth in a Southwest sandstorm to his ultimate role in a young man’s quest for redemption. It is a story of quiet observation, deep affection, and the enduring bond between human and animal.
Dust of New York
Konrad Bercovici
New York is a sprawling, polyglot orchestra, and these stories capture the individual instruments tuning up before the symphony begins.
Elsie's Girlhood: A Sequel to "Elsie Dinsmore" and "Elsie's Holidays at Roselands"
Martha Finley
This story follows a young woman’s transition into adulthood, tracing the delicate, often intense emotional geography of a daughter whose deepest loyalty belongs to a stern but adoring father. It is a portrait of a life shaped by strict obedience and the quiet, internal struggles of a heart learning to reconcile…
Episodes in Van Bibber's Life
Richard Harding Davis
A quintessential New York dandy navigates the complexities of high society, theater life, and the downtrodden with a blend of detached irony and surprising, impulsive compassion.
Floyd Grandon's Honor
Amanda M. Douglas
Amidst the social shifts of a nineteenth-century riverside enclave, a man of integrity balances the heavy burdens of family obligation against his own private, unfulfilled desires. This is a story of duty, inheritance, and the quiet struggle for self-possession.
Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales: "The fiddle and the bow," "The paradise of fools," "Visions and dreams"
Robt. L. (Robert Love) Taylor
The fiddle and the bow captures the spirit of a bygone American era, blending humor, nostalgia, and local lore into a series of oratorical performances that once captivated audiences across the country.
In the clouds
Charles Egbert Craddock
Against the towering, cloud-wreathed summits of the Great Smoky Mountains, a man’s life unravels when he is falsely accused of a crime that carries the weight of a death sentence. This atmospheric novel maps the collision between isolated mountain tradition and the encroaching judgment of the law.
Neither Here Nor There
Oliver Herford
The world is a grandly absurd stage, and this collection of essays invites you to pull up a chair, watch the performance, and laugh at the scenery. It is a sharp-witted romp through the minor irritations and major follies of the early twentieth century.
Poems
Marianne Moore
This collection of verse serves as a rigorous, unsentimental inquiry into the nature of observation, demanding that the reader look at the world with the precision of a scientist and the imagination of an artist.
Amazing Grace, Who Proves That Virtue Has Its Silver Lining
Kate Trimble Sharber
Some people absorb experience in gentle doses, while others require the harsh impact of a hypodermic needle; Grace Christie, a young woman living in a stifling Southern town, finds herself caught between these two worlds.
Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848
Various
This volume captures the mid-19th-century American literary zeitgeist, offering a diverse mosaic of serialized fiction, poetry, and cultural commentary that defined the reading experience of a burgeoning nation.
Jonas on a Farm in Winter
Jacob Abbott
A practical, industrious youth manages the affairs of a busy household, teaching young companions that character is built through labor, obedience, and the quiet resolution to return kindness for injury.
Melody
Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
A blind girl’s voice carries such rare beauty that it draws both the devoted love of her small village and the predatory ambition of a passing stranger.
Memories and Anecdotes
Kate Sanborn
This collection of personal recollections captures the fading atmosphere of nineteenth-century New England intellectual life. It serves as a gentle, conversational bridge to a world of village eccentrics, literary icons, and the quiet rhythms of a bygone era.
Our business civilization
James Truslow Adams
America’s mid-twentieth-century preoccupation with commerce and material accumulation threatens to hollow out the nation’s cultural soul. This incisive critique examines the heavy price of prioritizing profit over the deeper arts of human existence.
The Plum Tree
David Graham Phillips
The inner workings of American political power are stripped bare in this study of a man who builds a president, only to discover the hollowness of his own creation. It is a cold, calculated look at how influence really functions behind the curtain of democratic theater.
X Y Z: A Detective Story
Anna Katharine Green
HOOK A detective, sent to investigate a ring of counterfeiters, infiltrates a secluded estate’s masquerade ball, only to stumble into a deadly family conspiracy that ends in a shocking, irreversible act of violence.
A Few Figs from Thistles
Edna St. Vincent Millay
The candle burns at both ends in these verses, casting a brilliant, fleeting light upon the frantic, beautiful business of living. This collection captures the sharp wit and restless spirit of youth, where passion is as ephemeral as it is intense.
A New Sensation
Albert Ross
A wealthy, restless man attempts to cure his romantic obsession by hiring a mysterious woman as his private secretary for a tropical sea voyage, only to find himself ensnared in a web of deceit.
American Masters of Painting: Being Brief Appreciations of Some American Painters
Charles H. (Charles Henry) Caffin
This collection offers a series of focused, appreciative portraits of significant American artists, charting the evolution of a national aesthetic through the eyes of a critic deeply committed to the idea of artistic sincerity.
Betty Alden: The first-born daughter of the Pilgrims
Jane G. (Jane Goodwin) Austin
The first-born daughter of the Pilgrims navigates the quiet triumphs and profound losses of early colonial life, standing as a witness to the shifting burdens of her famous parents and their generation.
By the Light of the Soul: A Novel
Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
The story of a young woman navigating the quiet, crushing weight of New England duty, this narrative explores how the small, rigid choices of youth ripple outward to shape an entire life.
Pretty Geraldine, the New York Salesgirl
Miller, Alex. McVeigh, Mrs.
A New York salesgirl’s life is upended by a web of deception, leading her from the city’s bustling streets to the perils of an unwanted abduction and a sudden inheritance.
Rose of Dutcher's Coolly
Hamlin Garland
The odyssey of a gifted girl from a Wisconsin valley to the pulse of Chicago, this portrait captures the fierce tension between rural roots and the hunger for a life of the mind. It is a story of independence earned through the difficult shedding of old selves.
Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2
Unknown
The nineteenth-century American literary landscape comes to life in these pages, capturing a nation in transition through stories of war, frontier justice, romantic misunderstanding, and the quiet struggles of the disenfranchised.
Special Messenger
Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
Behind the lines of the American Civil War, a resourceful woman risks everything as a spy, navigating a world of shifting allegiances and lethal secrets.
The Garies and Their Friends
Frank J. Webb
The lives of free Black families in 1850s Philadelphia are irrevocably altered by the encroaching shadows of slavery and the violent intolerance of their white neighbors.
The Land of Long Ago
Eliza Calvert Hall
The Land of Long Ago serves as a bridge between the present and a fading Kentucky, inviting readers to sit by the hearth and listen to the echoes of a vanishing world. It is a quiet, reflective portrait of memory, loss, and the resilience of the human spirit.
The Little Book of Modern Verse: A Selection from the Work of Contemporaneous American Poets
Unknown
This collection captures the spirit of early twentieth-century American verse, offering a snapshot of a literary landscape caught between traditional forms and the emerging, restless energy of a new age. It stands as a curated bridge, connecting the echoes of the nineteenth century with the modern sensibilities…
The Sins of the Children: A Novel
Cosmo Hamilton
The tragic consequences of parental silence emerge when a group of well-meaning young people encounter a world for which they have been kept entirely unprepared. This story explores the vulnerability of the innocent and the moral duty of parents to provide the truth.
The Song of the Cardinal
Gene Stratton-Porter
A vibrant, defiant cardinal claims a corner of the world as his own, teaching a weary farmer the enduring power of joy and the sanctity of wild life.
What Answer?
Anna E. (Anna Elizabeth) Dickinson
This 1868 novel functions as a searing indictment of American prejudice, charting the impossible collision between a high-born white man and an educated woman of color against the backdrop of the Civil War.
A Daughter of the Sioux: A Tale of the Indian frontier
Charles King
The frontier is a place where loyalties shift like sand, and a single woman’s arrival can unravel the rigid order of an army post. Amid the tension of Indian warfare, the heart proves as dangerous a territory as the open plain.
Blacksheep! Blacksheep!
Meredith Nicholson
HOOK An idle, affluent bachelor finds his predictable life upended when he is mistaken for a fugitive, plunging him into a high-stakes game of shadows, aliases, and family secrets.
Danny's Own Story
Don Marquis
A foundling’s search for his own history leads him into the bizarre, itinerant world of a medicine-show huckster. This picaresque tale unfolds through the eyes of a narrator whose lack of a surname is matched only by his lack of a formal education.
Famous Authors (Men)
E. F. (Edward Francis) Harkins
This collection of biographical sketches offers an intimate glimpse into the lives and working habits of late nineteenth-century American literary figures, capturing the transition from the frontier to the refined parlor.
Mr. Rabbit at Home: A sequel to Little Mr. Thimblefinger and his Queer Country
Joel Chandler Harris
This whimsical journey into a hidden, subterranean world blends the familiar structure of bedtime stories with the surreal, unpredictable logic of a dream. It offers a portal where animals possess the gift of speech and geography is defined by magic rather than maps.
Star-Dust: A Story of an American Girl
Fannie Hurst
A young woman trades the suffocating narrowness of her provincial upbringing for the relentless, glittering promise of New York City, only to discover that the price of independence is a lifetime of hard-won, lonely ambition.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 08, June 1858: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
This collection captures the intellectual pulse of mid-nineteenth-century America, blending rigorous social commentary, literary criticism, and natural observation into a singular, cohesive monthly chronicle.
The Blunders of a Bashful Man
Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
A bashful man finds that his extreme diffidence is not merely a social burden, but a magnet for perpetual, escalating catastrophe. He moves through life bracing for the next inevitable social blunder.
The History and Records of the Elephant Club
Q. K. Philander Doesticks
This collection captures the frantic, satirical energy of mid-19th-century New York, chronicling the absurd escapades of a group of men bound by a common, ridiculous pursuit. It serves as a boisterous window into the urban wit and social restlessness of the 1850s.
The Road to Understanding
Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
A young man’s impulsive marriage to a nursemaid triggers a long, painful estrangement from his father. This story follows their separate journeys as they navigate the difficult paths of regret, pride, and eventual reconciliation.
A Bullet for Cinderella
John D. (John Dann) MacDonald
A man burdened by war brings home a dead friend’s secret, only to find that searching for buried fortune forces him to confront the wreckage of his own soul.
A Phyllis of the Sierras
Bret Harte
A young English traveler finds himself nursed back to health by a mysterious household in the California mountains, only to trigger a complex web of social ambitions, hidden wealth, and class-conscious rivalries.
Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief
James Fenimore Cooper
This tale traces the life of a single embroidered handkerchief as it moves from the hands of a struggling French noblewoman to the vanity of New York’s social elite. It serves as a curious, enduring satire on human value and the shifting tides of wealth.
Letters from a Landscape Painter
Charles Lanman
A wandering artist traverses the American wilderness, finding spiritual resonance in the majesty of nature and the quiet lives of its inhabitants. These reflections offer a meditative glimpse into a lost nineteenth-century landscape.
Messiah
Gore Vidal
A charisma that offers absolute certainty about death will always find a mass audience. This sharp, forgotten mid-century satire charts how easily a civilization's spiritual void transforms a simple message of quiet oblivion into an inescapable global death cult.