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American Literature — page 45
4,848 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 45 of 101.
Introducing the American Spirit
Edward Alfred Steiner
The American spirit is a complex, often contradictory force that reveals itself most clearly when viewed through the critical eyes of an outsider. It is a portrait of a nation in constant, restless motion.
'Lena Rivers
Mary Jane Holmes
The journey of a young woman finding her place in a divided family, this novel captures the tension between social ambition and the quiet integrity of the heart. It is a story of resilience, inheritance, and the enduring search for belonging.
Lincoln & other poems
Edwin Markham
This collection of verse captures the tension between the idealism of a new American century and the grinding realities of industrial inequality. It serves as a stirring, rhythmic manifesto for human brotherhood, rooted in the dignity of the common laborer.
Little Annie's Ramble (From "Twice Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
This gentle, observant stroll through a nineteenth-century town captures the fleeting threshold between childhood innocence and the burdens of adult life. It is a meditative exploration of how a child’s perspective can briefly restore a weary spirit.
Midnight
Rutherford G. (Rutherford George) Montgomery
The story of a chestnut stallion born to the high, unforgiving ridges of the American West, this narrative tracks the life of a wild horse who must navigate a landscape filled with predators, natural disasters, and the constant, encroaching pressure of mankind.
Poems on Slavery
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
This collection of verse serves as a stark, lyrical indictment of American chattel slavery. It uses the power of rhythmic storytelling to demand moral accountability from a nation that claimed to value both liberty and faith.
Rose O'Paradise
Grace Miller White
A young girl, a stolen inheritance, and a haunting melody weave together in a struggle for justice and belonging. Against the backdrop of a lonely, wind-swept farmhouse and the humble shacks of Paradise Road, a soul finds its worth in the most unlikely of places.
The Debtor: A Novel
Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
The Carroll family arrives in the suburban village of Banbridge, projecting an air of genteel, aristocratic ease that masks a profound and crumbling insolvency. Their struggle to maintain appearances in a community that thrives on observation and gossip forms the core of this poignant, socially observant drama.
The Fortune of the Landrays
Vaughan Kester
A sweeping chronicle of the American West, this multi-generational saga explores the heavy cost of ambition, the fragility of fortune, and the enduring, often painful, ties that bind a family to its past.
Elder Conklin and Other Stories
Frank Harris
A rugged, unvarnished portrait of the American frontier, this collection captures the moral friction between the lawless, the ambitious, and the idealistic in a developing landscape.
Jane Journeys On
Ruth Comfort Mitchell
The journey of a young woman from a stifling Vermont village to the vibrant, demanding streets of New York City, where she learns that true independence is found not in running away, but in choosing the right companion for the road ahead.
Miss Maitland, Private Secretary
Geraldine Bonner
A young woman’s poise and hidden history become the epicenter of a wealthy family’s unraveling in this atmospheric mystery. Caught between a failing marriage and a series of professional betrayals, a social secretary finds her integrity tested by a high-stakes investigation.
Sudden Jim
Clarence Budington Kelland
A young man, long adrift and aimless, must reinvent himself as a hard-nosed industrialist to save a failing mill and win the respect of a formidable, tradition-bound father.
The Adventures of a Suburbanite
Ellis Parker Butler
The suburban life is often painted as a tranquil retreat, but for one eager couple, it proves to be a chaotic theater of mechanical mishaps, eccentric neighbors, and a relentless, unquenchable urge to travel just eleven miles down the road.
The Affable Stranger
Peter McArthur
A weary writer seeks a clean slate by purging his post-war disillusionment into a book, only to find that the journey reveals the enduring, quiet pulse of humanity beneath the noise of modern life.
The Bishop's Shadow
I. T. (Ida Treadwell) Thurston
A neglected street boy finds a new moral compass through a chance encounter with a revered bishop, transforming his own life by attempting to pass on that same grace to others.
The Bradys Beyond Their Depth
Francis Worcester Doughty
A pair of intrepid New York detectives finds themselves outmatched in a perilous Southern marsh, where a ruthless nephew’s plot to steal a fortune forces them to confront a deadly, hidden conspiracy.
The girl with the green eyes
Clyde Fitch
The girl with the green eyes is a turbulent portrait of a marriage nearly undone by the corrosive power of groundless jealousy. It captures the frantic, destructive energy of a woman who cannot trust her own happiness.
The lost hunter: A tale of early times
John Turvill Adams
A solitary figure living on the fringes of civilization becomes the catalyst for a community’s moral reckoning, forcing neighbors to confront their prejudices and the vanishing remnants of the past.
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. Collected from Various Sources and Embellished for Publication
William B. Laughead
A mythical giant of the North Woods, Paul Bunyan turns the daunting labor of the American frontier into a series of impossible, larger-than-life feats performed with a blue ox and a sense of humor.
The Soul Scar: A Craig Kennedy Scientific Mystery Novel
Arthur B. (Arthur Benjamin) Reeve
A pioneering professor-detective applies the budding science of psychoanalysis to solve a high-society murder, proving that even the most carefully guarded secrets are written on the soul.
A Fortnight of Folly
Maurice Thompson
HOOK A gathering of literary types at a remote mountain hotel provides the setting for a sharp, skeptical look at the vanity of writers and the absurdity of seeking truth in fiction.
American Architecture: Studies
Montgomery Schuyler
A sharp, discerning survey of late-nineteenth-century building, this collection examines how American cities struggled—and often failed—to reconcile utilitarian construction with lasting artistic merit.
General William Booth Enters into Heaven, and Other Poems
Vachel Lindsay
A traveling poet wanders the American heartland, trading verse for bread and seeking the divine in the dust of the everyday.
Hildegarde's Harvest
Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
A young woman’s journey from the sheltered comforts of country life to the rigid expectations of city society, eventually finding her path through service, friendship, and an unexpected crisis.
Postscripts
O. Henry
The world is a stage where the actors are often caught in the crossfire of their own absurdities, and the best way to survive the spectacle is to laugh at the confusion. This collection of vignettes captures the fleeting, often ridiculous pulse of late 19th-century American life, where high-minded pretense is…
Scattergood Baines
Clarence Budington Kelland
A legendarily shrewd, barefoot storekeeper arrives in a quiet New England valley and quietly orchestrates the lives, businesses, and futures of everyone around him.
The Butterfly House
Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
In the stifling confines of a self-important New Jersey village, a quiet young woman’s literary success becomes a battlefield for the vanity and hidden truths of her neighbors.
The Madonna of the Future
Henry James
An artist living in Florence clings to the hope of creating a singular, perfect masterpiece, but he finds himself trapped in a life of endless preparation, unable to bridge the distance between his ideals and his work.
The Tin Box, and What it Contained
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
Harry Gilbert is a hardworking, principled youth who finds that honesty is not just a moral virtue, but a shield against the schemes of the wealthy and corrupt. This classic tale follows the fortunes of an impoverished boy whose life is upended by the arrival of a wealthy, unsympathetic relative and a series of…
A Romance of the Republic
Lydia Maria Child
The struggle for freedom and identity collides with the harsh legal realities of a divided nation, tracing the lives of two sisters caught in the machinery of an unforgiving society.
A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike
Charles King
Amidst the chaos of the 1894 Pullman Strike, a soldier and a working girl must navigate the rigid barriers of class and the dangerous machinations of a self-serving agitator.
Boston Neighbours In Town and Out
Agnes Blake Poor
These interconnected stories capture the quiet, often stifling rhythms of Boston’s upper-class social circles, where small-town gossip and rigid expectations define the boundaries of a life well-lived.
City Crimes
George Thompson
HOOK A wealthy young man abandons his life of luxury to explore the hidden, squalid underworld of a nineteenth-century metropolis, hoping to use his fortune to save the impoverished and expose the corrupt.
Coffee and Repartee
John Kendrick Bangs
A sharp-witted boarder turns every morning meal into a theater of verbal sparring, relentlessly baiting his pompous, educated companions with absurd logic and playful defiance.
Coming Attraction
Fritz Leiber
A chilling vision of a future ruined by fear and vanity, where the survival of the species is secondary to the pursuit of dominance. This narrative explores how a society masks its own decay.
Donald McElroy, Scotch Irishman
Willie Walker Caldwell
Born into the rugged independence of the Virginia frontier on the eve of the American Revolution, a young man finds his path to love and duty inextricably linked to the birth of a new nation.
Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus
Josephine Chase
A dedicated young alumna returns to her alma mater to manage a student residence, discovering that guiding a new generation of women requires as much courage as earning an education.
Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848
Various
This collection captures the mid-19th-century American literary pulse through a curated blend of historical biography, serialized fiction, and reflective poetry.
Jeff Briggs's Love Story
Bret Harte
The rugged, rain-lashed landscape of a California mountain pass serves as the stage for a dramatic collision between a weary, romantic innkeeper and a refined, wealthy traveler. This tale of social divides, hidden debts, and the transformative power of love captures the fading spirit of the American frontier.
Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes
E. E. (Emma Elizabeth) Brown
A beloved physician and literary wit, this figure serves as a bridge between the intellectual rigor of early American medicine and the blossoming of a uniquely local, optimistic, and deeply humanistic literature.
Literary Hearthstones of Dixie
La Salle Corbell Pickett
These essays preserve the vanishing domestic and creative worlds of nineteenth-century Southern writers, capturing the intimacy of their homes and the flickering spirit of their vanished era.
Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man
Sinclair Lewis
Our Mr. Wrenn is a gentle, imaginative clerk who longs to trade his desk for the romantic landscapes of his daydreams. His quest for a grander life reveals the quiet, often hilarious tension between the world we inhabit and the worlds we invent.
The Black Riders, and Other Lines
Stephen Crane
The struggle for meaning often leads to the discovery that the universe is indifferent, yet the human heart continues to beat with an irrepressible, if painful, defiance.
The Happy Venture
Edith Ballinger Price
When their mother falls ill, three siblings carve out a new life in an isolated farmhouse. Through resourcefulness and unexpected friendships, they discover that home is not a place, but the people you protect.
The Short Cut
Jackson Gregory
A man falsely accused of murder takes to the mountain wilderness, where he relies on a clever woman to help him dismantle the schemes of the men who orchestrated his downfall.
Unleavened Bread
Robert Grant
A woman of intense, unyielding conviction maneuvers her way through the shifting landscape of American social and political life, driven by a relentless hunger for status and a singular, inflexible moral code.
William Hamilton Gibson: artist—naturalist—author
John Coleman Adams
A devoted artist and naturalist, William Hamilton Gibson bridged the gap between scientific precision and artistic wonder, teaching a generation to observe the hidden, luminous details of the natural world.