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American Literature — page 55
4,848 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 55 of 101.
And both were young
Madeleine L'Engle
Standing on a gentle hill above Lake Geneva, two teenagers find solace in an unexpected friendship that breaks through their deep isolation.
Gloria
Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
A child-heroine escapes an forced marriage to her guardian by allying with a poor fisherman, setting off a wild journey through aristocratic scandal and haunted halls.
Graham's Magazine, Vol. XX, No. 6, June 1842
Various
A single issue of a nineteenth-century American magazine offers a striking cross-section of romantic fiction, localized reporting, moralistic verse, and sharp literary criticism.
Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Joel Chandler Harris
Joel Chandler Harris
A vast landscape of Middle Georgia opens up through a rich tapestry of animal fables, historical sketches, Reconstruction struggles, and swamp adventures. Across decades of storytelling, plantation traditions give way to a changing Southern society.
Life on the Mississippi, Part 3
Mark Twain
A treacherous river shifts under every passing boat, demanding absolute mastery from the men who steer the great wooden steamers through its dark, labyrinthine currents.
Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches
Ruth McEnery Stuart
A month after burying her husband, a plantation widow plans a remarriage while stubbornly guarding her full year of grief, setting off a collection of wry, tender tales.
Sonnets and Canzonets
Amos Bronson Alcott
Through quiet verse and earnest portraits, a New England elder reflects on a long life shaped by love, philosophical friendship, and the American struggle for freedom.
The Little Moment of Happiness
Clarence Budington Kelland
A young American officer stationed in Paris during the First World War discovers that the rigid moral code of his upbringing falls apart when confronted with the complex, gentle reality of French love.
The philosophy of Elbert Hubbard
Elbert Hubbard
A spirited crusade against rigid dogma, this collection of essays urges humanity to abandon institutional fear and embrace a life of active work, open air, and personal responsibility.
The Turning of Griggsby: Being a Story of Keeping up with Dan'l Webster
Irving Bacheller
A small New England town collapses into pompous ruin when every local man tries to ape the thunderous, brandy-fueled grandeur of Daniel Webster.
Abner Daniel: A Novel
Will N. (Will Nathaniel) Harben
Land, blood, and local custom bind the North Georgia mountains, where a stubborn farmer’s reckless property trades threaten to drag his family into ruin.
Adventures in American Bookshops, Antique Stores and Auction Rooms
Guido Bruno
A wandering bookman pulls back the velvet curtain of early twentieth-century print culture, exposing the eccentric dealers, backroom schemes, and silent paper treasures hidden across America's urban centers.
An Ambitious Man
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
She sacrificed her heart for political advancement, only to discover that the price of her rising star was a lifetime of bitter, inescapable regret.
Brother Jonathan
Hezekiah Butterworth
Courage and quiet faith sustain a Connecticut community as it serves as the secret engine of the American Revolution.
Dab Kinzer: A Story of a Growing Boy
William O. Stoddard
Fast-growing, easily overlooked, and awkward in his clothes, fifteen-year-old Dabney Kinzer finds himself suddenly propelled toward adulthood through small-town changes and unpredictable seaside adventures along Long Island's south shore.
Gypsy's Cousin Joy
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
A spirited country girl must share her room and her routines with a newly orphaned city cousin, turning their sharp daily friction into a deep, enduring bond.
Memoirs of a millionaire
Lucia True Ames Mead
A young woman unexpectedly inherits a vast fortune, turning her quiet life into a bold experiment in social reform and practical compassion.
New Year's Day (The 'Seventies)
Edith Wharton
A scandal exposed in a hotel fire reverberates across decades of New York high society, unraveling a woman's desperate sacrifice for the dying husband who never knew the truth.
Poems
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Across a collection of impassioned, deeply felt verse, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper crafts a vision of moral duty, racial justice, and spiritual endurance in post-Reconstruction America.
Religious Poems
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Faith does not banish grief; it offers a quiet sanctuary where sorrow and hope learn to speak the same language.
The "Goldfish": Being the Confessions af a Successful Man
Arthur Cheney Train
Wealth isolates its owners behind a glass barrier, creating an illusion of life while severing genuine human connection.
The Old Homestead
Ann S. (Ann Sophia) Stephens
A little girl shivering on a New England doorstep sets in motion a decades-long chronicle of secret lineages, lost inheritances, and quiet moral strength.
Toying with fate
Nicholas (House name) Carter
A relentless detective pursues two tangled murder cases through the gaslit shadows, back alleys, and gilded parlors of turn-of-the-century Manhattan.
Betty Lee, Senior
Harriet Pyne Grove
An exuberant, industrious high school senior navigates her final year of high school in 1930s Ohio, balancing academics, athletic rivalries, family moves, missing love letters, and a mid-ocean coastal adventure.
Buying a Horse
William Dean Howells
A middle-aged urbanite decides to move to the country and buy a family horse, only to discover that the modern market is an inescapable maze of deceptive dealers, defective beasts, and maddening social awkwardness.
Clotelle: A Tale of the Southern States
William Wells Brown
A light-skinned enslaved woman and her courageous lover risk everything to flee the American South, seeking a sanctuary that only the wider world can truly provide.
Elsie's Journey on Inland Waters
Martha Finley
A wealthy extended family cruises American waterways together, filling their long days afloat with historical storytelling, patriotic gratitude, and gentle moral instruction.
Gaut Gurley
Daniel P. (Daniel Pierce) Thompson
Lured by the promise of wealth in the northern woods, a fallen family finds that the deadliest predator on the frontier walks on two legs.
Hatchie, the Guardian Slave
Oliver Optic
Bound to a Southern plantation by law but to his young mistress by profound devotion, an enslaved man becomes her fierce shield against calculating villains and sudden catastrophe.
Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee: Giving an Account of Her Call to Preach the Gospel
Jarena Lee
An early nineteenth-century itinerant evangelist recounts her spiritual conversion, her fight against gendered hostility, and her thousands of miles traveled to deliver the Gospel.
Riley Farm-Rhymes
James Whitcomb Riley
Sunlight filters through orchard leaves, and the scent of damp clover lingers long after childhood has slipped away.
Songs and Satires
Edgar Lee Masters
In a world drowned in transient noise, language breaks down before the absolute depths of human life, leaving us voiceless before grief, urban decay, and elusive love.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
A collection of nineteenth-century American voices probes the arts, politics, domestic life, and the moral urgency of war.
The Diary of a Saint
Arlo Bates
A young woman's diary reveals her journey through love, loss, and self-discovery in a small New England town.
The Great Stone of Sardis
Frank R. Stockton
Deep within the earth, beneath fourteen miles of solid rock, lies a brilliant, unyielding shell of pure diamond that forms the true core of the world.
Alida
Amelia Stratton Comfield
A young woman navigating the social pressures and personal tragedies of the American Revolutionary era learns to balance youthful emotion with the stoic demands of duty and faith.
In the Saddle
Oliver Optic
The Civil War is not merely a clash of armies, but a fracture of the home, where young men must choose between the comfort of their kin and the call of their conscience.
May Iverson's Career
Elizabeth Garver Jordan
This chronicle follows a young, ambitious convent graduate as she navigates the competitive world of New York journalism and eventually finds success as a playwright. It is a portrait of a woman claiming her own voice.
Patience Sparhawk and Her Times: A Novel
Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
This is a study of a fiercely independent woman navigating the rigid social structures and internal conflicts of late 19th-century America. It captures the tension between the raw, individualistic spirit of a "new race" and the stifling expectations of traditional society.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 76, February, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
A vibrant slice of Civil War-era intellect, this issue captures a nation reimagining its culture, science, and moral obligations amid conflict.
The Bread Line: A Story of a Paper
Albert Bigelow Paine
This is a cautionary, often humorous account of four ambitious men in turn-of-the-century New York who stake their futures on a scheme to launch a magazine without a cent of capital.
The Doctor's Christmas Eve
James Lane Allen
A physician in the twilight of his youth confronts the ghosts of his own unfulfilled desires on a cold, transformative Christmas Eve in Kentucky.
The Lash
Olin L. (Olin Linus) Lyman
The city’s political machine is a web of corruption, and the man at the center finds his own past catching up to him in the form of an unlikely, troubled investigator.
The Pace That Kills: A Chronicle
Edgar Saltus
The fast life of a cynical socialite leads to ruinous consequences when he marries for a fortune that proves as phantom as his own integrity. This grim chronicle explores the collision between inherited prestige and the harsh realities of debt and deceit.
A Little Florida Lady
Dorothy C. (Dorothy Charlotte) Paine
This is a story of a young girl’s relocation from the frozen North to the sun-drenched, wild landscape of Florida, where she learns to navigate the complexities of nature, friendship, and responsibility.
A Town Is Drowning
Frederik Pohl
This is a spare, urgent portrait of a community thrust into sudden, catastrophic crisis. It traces the disintegration of order and the raw human responses—both selfish and heroic—that emerge when the earth gives way.
Mackinac and Lake Stories
Mary Hartwell Catherwood
HOOK Set against the rugged, untamed beauty of the Great Lakes, these stories capture the fleeting, intense moments of lives lived on the edge of the wilderness.
Marjorie Dean, High School Freshman
Josephine Chase
Marjorie Dean is a high-spirited girl navigating the social complexities of a new high school, where her integrity is tested by elitist peers and a false accusation against her best friend.