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American Literature — page 47
4,848 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 47 of 101.
Bertram Cope's Year
Henry Blake Fuller
The young man who arrives in Churchton to teach is less a person than a canvas, inviting the middle-aged to project their own longings upon his pleasing, passive surface.
Biltmore Oswald
Thorne Smith
This chronicle of a bewildered, high-society enlistee navigating the indignities of naval training serves as a sharp, satirical mirror to the rigid absurdity of military life during the First World War.
Fire Worship (From "Mosses from an Old Manse")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The open hearth was once the beating heart of the home, a flickering companion to human life. Its replacement by the cold, iron-bound stove marks a profound and irreversible shift in the spirit of domestic society.
Further E. K. Means: Is This a Title? It Is Not. It Is the Name of a Writer of Negro Stories, Who Has Made Himself So Completely the Writer of Negro Stories That This Third Book, Like the First and Second, Needs No Title
E. K. (Eldred Kurtz) Means
In the humid swamps and dusty streets of Tickfall, a colorful cast of schemers, dreamers, and fast-talking hustlers navigate a series of absurd, high-stakes adventures in this collection of interconnected tales.
Hell Fer Sartain and Other Stories
Fox, John, Jr.
The mountain peaks of the Cumberlands hide lives of fierce, jagged intensity, where a single glance can spark a feud and the simplest act of love becomes a matter of life or death.
Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Horatio Alger, Jr
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
An index of the works of this prolific author reveals a vast library of tales centered on the rise of the underdog, tracing the pathways from obscurity to success in nineteenth-century America.
The Blind Brother: A Story of the Pennsylvania Coal Mines
Homer Greene
A story of brotherhood, labor, and moral crisis in the Pennsylvania coal mines, where a young miner must choose between a bribe to protect a criminal and his own integrity.
The Cinder Pond
Carroll Watson Rankin
A scrappy girl living in a derelict corner of the Michigan wilderness pursues her dream of refinement and family stability, navigating the rigid social boundaries between the "Cinder Pond" and the world of high society.
The Eddy: A Novel of To-day
Clarence Louis Cullen
A young woman returns from school to the fractured, glamour-starved world of her divorced mother, only to find that the social elite of New York cannot protect her from the consequences of a life built on compromise.
The Guns of Bull Run: A Story of the Civil War's Eve
Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander) Altsheler
A young man steps from the comfortable certainty of his Kentucky home into the fire of a nation shattering against itself. He finds his loyalties tested as the gathering storm of the American Civil War pulls him toward the first great collision at Bull Run.
The harp-weaver, and other poems
Edna St. Vincent Millay
These poems capture the ache of transient love and the stubborn persistence of the human spirit, weaving together the sharp sting of loss with a profound, clear-eyed appreciation for the beauty that remains.
Daisy's Necklace, and What Came of It
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
This work is a spirited, unconventional literary episode that blends a sentimental, Victorian-era tale of mystery and family secrets with a self-aware, satirical commentary on the act of writing itself. It serves as both a story of lost identities and a playful deconstruction of the publishing industry.
Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World. Part 1
Mark Twain
A world-traveling lecture tour becomes a sprawling, irreverent meditation on the absurdities of human belief, the failures of colonial ambition, and the strange, stubborn persistence of the traveler’s own bad habits.
Four Girls at Chautauqua
Pansy
Four young women embark on a summer journey to a forest camp meeting, unaware that the experience will fundamentally alter their personal beliefs and the direction of their lives.
Mr. Dooley Says
Finley Peter Dunne
A sharp-tongued Irish bartender holds court in his Chicago saloon, dissecting the grand politics and petty absurdities of his era with a wit that remains as biting today as it was a century ago.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics
Various
This November 1866 installment of a prominent American literary magazine serves as a vibrant, multifaceted time capsule, capturing the intellectual pulse of the post-Civil War era through fiction, historical commentary, and sharp political analysis.
The Bird in the Box
Mary M. (Mary Martha) Mears
A soul’s quest for liberation through the fires of love and the discipline of labor unfolds against a backdrop of mist-shrouded coasts and the industrial pulse of the city.
The Californians
Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
Caught between the fading traditions of old California and the rigid, cold expectations of the American elite, a young woman struggles to define her identity in a world that demands her silence.
The Chimney-Corner
Harriet Beecher Stowe
The domestic sphere is not merely a stage for household management, but the vital laboratory where the character of a democratic nation is forged and tested.
The mule-bone
Zora Neale Hurston
Two friends, a guitarist and a dancer, find their lifelong bond tested by a town’s pettiness and their own pursuit of the same woman. This play captures the rhythm and sharp-tongued humor of a Florida community as it navigates love, ego, and the social pressures of a small town.
The Real Diary of a Real Boy
Henry A. (Henry Augustus) Shute
A salt-box in a dusty shed-chamber yields a long-forgotten copybook, revealing the unvarnished, daily record of a boy’s life in a late 19th-century New England town.
The Stillwater Tragedy
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
The quiet industrial village of Stillwater becomes the site of a grim mystery when a wealthy recluse is murdered, casting a long shadow over the lives of its inhabitants. This atmospheric work blends the slow, rhythmic life of a New England town with the mounting tensions of labor unrest and a shifting criminal…
Two years and four months in a lunatic asylum
Hiram Chase
A clergyman recounts his involuntary confinement at the New York State Lunatic Asylum in Utica, detailing the harrowing erosion of personal liberty and the administrative indifference he endured for over two years.
A Master's Degree
Margaret Hill McCarter
In a Kansas college town, two very different young men embark on a transformative journey toward adulthood, discovering that true achievement requires more than just academic success. They learn that the greatest honors are earned through character, sacrifice, and the conquest of the self.
Behind the Screen
Samuel Goldwyn
Hollywood’s early days were powered by sheer instinct, ruthless dealmaking, and unforgettable personalities.
The Arena, Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891
Various
A collection of fierce reformist intellects turns its gaze upon late-nineteenth-century American society, challenging entrenched dogma across literature, economics, religion, and human consciousness.
The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter
F. Colburn (Francis Colburn) Adams
A man of grandiose delusions abandons his quiet village to become a politician and general, only to discover that the world of power is built on farce, bribery, and the hollow echoes of his own ego.
The Queen's Twin and Other Stories
Sarah Orne Jewett
A collection of quiet, observant tales captures the resilient spirits, gentle humor, and enduring dignity of late nineteenth-century New England village life.
The Ralstons
F. Marion (Francis Marion) Crawford
A secret marriage, an agonizingly slow deathbed, and an eighty-million-dollar estate set a prominent New York clan against itself in a struggle where cold calculation battles headlong devotion.
The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories
Paul Laurence Dunbar
A quiet, resolute dignity anchors the lives of those navigating the shifting currents of post-Emancipation America, where the promise of freedom often clashes with the rigid realities of prejudice and personal ambition.
Bert Wilson on the Gridiron
J. W. Duffield
Determined to lift their football team to glory, three college athletes navigate harsh coaches, academic setbacks, and wild off-field distractions to secure the ultimate gridiron victory.
Catcher Craig
Christy Mathewson
A steady, observant catcher learns that leadership requires restraint, whether calming a rattled pitcher or choosing an honest path to college.
Catty Atkins
Clarence Budington Kelland
Determined to shed the stigma of vagrancy, a young boy pulls his easygoing father out of the woods and turns them both into thriving, respectable businessmen through grit, quick thinking, and shear force of will.
Daisy in the Field
Susan Warner
A Southern heiress stands between the sharp demands of her Confederate family and her pledge to a Union soldier, choosing quiet faith over every temptation to compromise.
Half a Rogue
Harold MacGrath
An ambitious playwright-turned-politician faces down a shadowy smear campaign in his industrial hometown while trying to win the heart of a proud, high-minded young woman.
May-Day, and Other Pieces
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world breaks its winter sleep not through quiet easing, but through an overwhelming surge of light, heat, and awakening intellect.
New Faces
Myra Kelly
A young woman looks at the street below her hotel window, counting the hours until her husband returns, while down on Fourteenth Street a young man tries to carry a fully dressed, grinning mannequin through a crowded Christmas market.
Old Crow
Alice Brown
A brooding veteran returns from World War I to small-town New England, where he finds himself drawn into the hidden, desperate life of a local woman trapped in a marriage to a fanatically jealous husband.
Oldport Days
Thomas Wentworth Higginson
A sea-bound town sheds its summer crowds, leaving quiet lanes, decaying wharves, and gentle lives exposed to the softening light of autumn and winter.
Rainy Week
Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
A couple stages a weeklong New England house-party during an annual deluge, treating their guests' eccentricities and hidden heartbreaks as live theatre.
The Bent Twig
Dorothy Canfield Fisher
A young woman raised in simple, high-minded frugality finds herself torn between the intoxicating sheen of wealth and the quiet integrity of her upbringing.
The Gnome King of Oz
Ruth Plumly Thompson
A displaced boy, a runaway king, and a scattered quilt of travelers converge on the Emerald City in an unexpected scramble for power and home.
The Hall of Fantasy (From "Mosses from an Old Manse")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A quiet wanderer treads through a glowing, marble-paved hall where dreamers, inventors, and visionaries gather under stained-glass light.
The Ladies' Vase
American lady
A quiet heart and self-governed mind form the true foundation of female character, turning daily duties into acts of lasting spiritual grace.
The Memoirs of an American Citizen
Robert Herrick
A young man flees small-town trouble for Chicago, where he trades his conscience for financial dominion and a seat in the United States Senate.
The Reign of Law
James Lane Allen
A young Kentuckian breaks from his inherited dogma, trading the certainty of a rural pulpit for the hard, clear light of modern thought.
Abe and Mawruss: Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter
Montague Glass
A look at the comical, fast-paced world of New York’s garment district reveal how pride, panic, and fierce loyalty drive two unforgettable business partners.
Dorothy's Tour
Evelyn Raymond
A young violin virtuoso embarks on a high-stakes concert tour that brings artistic triumph, personal growth, and clues to a hidden inheritance.