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American Literature — page 68
4,848 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 68 of 101.
Cinderella, and Other Stories
Richard Harding Davis
A collection of five stories captures the restless energy of the late nineteenth century, tracing the lives of urban dreamers and accidental adventurers as they collide with an rapidly modernizing world.
Folks from Dixie
Paul Laurence Dunbar
These stories capture the human pulse of the American South during a pivotal era, blending humor, hardship, and the quiet dignity of individuals navigating a changing social landscape.
Kidnapped at the Altar
Laura Jean Libbey
This is a breathless tale of stolen identity, tragic romance, and the enduring struggle between virtue and villainy. It follows a young woman whose life is upended by the sudden disappearance of a wealthy bride, leading to a desperate search for love and truth across a landscape of secrets and social peril.
"Laramie;" Or, The Queen of Bedlam. A Story of the Sioux War of 1876
Charles King
A young lieutenant’s silver money vanishes from his desk on a frontier army post, leaving a trail of silken rustles and missing keepsakes across the Cheyenne plains.
Sights from a Steeple (From "Twice Told Tales")
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A solitary observer perched atop a church steeple surveys the town below, finding the human drama of life and death unfolding with equal indifference beneath the gathering clouds of a summer storm.
Stephen H. Branch's Alligator, Vol. 1 no. 03, May 8, 1858
Unknown
This publication is a volatile, singular artifact of 1850s New York journalism, blending moralizing memoir with scathing political satire and local gossip. It serves as a frantic, unfiltered lens into the city’s social and political underworld.
The Argonauts of North Liberty
Bret Harte
A chilly Connecticut parish hides a secret romance, propelling two men and a cold, pious woman into the turbulent chaos of Gold Rush California.
The Blue Goose
Frank Lewis Nason
The struggle for integrity in a corrupt industrial landscape is the central pulse of this rugged, turn-of-the-century mining drama. It balances the grit of labor conflict against the quiet, persistent growth of an unlikely romance.
The Seiners
James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
A master fisherman navigates the competitive, high-stakes world of the Gloucester mackerel fleet, where skill at the helm is the only currency that matters.
The southern literary messenger, Vol. II., No. 11, October, 1836
Various
This October 1836 issue of a prominent Virginian periodical functions as a cultural time capsule, capturing the intellectual anxieties and literary appetites of the antebellum American South. It preserves a distinct snapshot of an era when political debate, classical education, and foreign travel were the primary…
While Caroline Was Growing
Josephine Daskam Bacon
Caroline is a spirited young girl who, while navigating the rigid expectations of her upbringing and the boredom of her lessons, finds herself a silent observer of the complexities of the adult world.
Colonel Starbottle's Client
Bret Harte
A man travels cross-country to offer his life to the family of the opponent he killed in a duel, only to find revenge is far more complicated than a straight exchange of blood.
Edith and John
Franklin Smith Farquhar
A rainy, soot-choked Pittsburgh serves as the backdrop for a quiet romance that bridges the cavernous gap between the city’s wealthy elite and its struggling, laboring classes. It is a story of unlikely connections, moral reckonings, and the persistent pull of home.
Eugene Pickering
Henry James
The transformation of a sheltered young man from a rigid, parentally-controlled upbringing into a participant in his own life forms the center of this narrative. It explores the vulnerability of innocence when it finally collides with the sophisticated, deceptive currents of the wider world.
Follow the Ball
Ralph Henry Barbour
The pursuit of athletic excellence is seldom a straight line, as one student discovers while navigating the complex social hierarchies and competitive pressures of school life.
Gunsight Pass: How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West
William MacLeod Raine
The harsh desert of the American West transforms as the discovery of oil turns cattle ranges into battlegrounds, pitting the old ways against the violent uncertainty of a new industrial age.
Jerry Junior
Jean Webster
An idle summer on the shores of Lake Garda becomes a battle of wits when a young American heiress and a bored tourist engage in a game of disguised identities and romantic brinkmanship.
John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10): Southern California
John L. (John Lawson) Stoddard
This travelogue captures the awe of the American West at the turn of the twentieth century, guiding readers through the stark deserts, volcanic wonders, and majestic canyons of a landscape still finding its place in the national imagination.
Making His Mark
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
HOOK A disinherited boy faces his stepmother’s cruelty, only to find fortune through his own pluck and the unexpected trust of strangers.
Penny Nichols Finds a Clue
Joan Clark
A clever young woman takes up the trail of a notorious car-thieving syndicate, risking her own safety to clear the name of a local policeman’s son.
Running Sands
Reginald Wright Kauffman
A self-made man of the frontier attempts to conquer his own aging by marrying a woman decades his junior, only to discover that the laws of nature are not so easily bargained with.
The Beauty and the Bolshevist
Alice Duer Miller
When a radical newspaper editor journeys to Newport to stop his brother’s marriage into a wealthy family, he finds himself ensnared by the very daughter of the capitalist he intends to confront.
The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner
Charles Dudley Warner
This is a record of an American traveler’s unhurried, idiosyncratic wanderings through Europe in the late 19th century. It rejects the utility of a standard guidebook, favoring personal impressions and the quiet joys of sauntering over the accumulation of facts.
The Dark Fleece
Joseph Hergesheimer
The lure of sudden wealth and the friction of returning home collide in a quiet, unforgiving New England town. A man’s violent past becomes a weapon wielded by those who fear his outsider status.
The House of Fulfilment
George Madden Martin
This is a quiet, observant study of two generations of Southerners navigating the friction between inherited social duty and the impulsive, often messy demands of the human heart. It chronicles the coming-of-age of Alexina, a young woman whose life shifts from the rigid, sterile expectations of her wealthy Blair…
The Janitor's Boy, and Other Poems
Nathalia Crane
A ten-year-old girl transforms the mundane details of a Brooklyn childhood—janitors’ sons, backyards, and ten-cent store trinkets—into a vibrant, mythic landscape. Her rhythmic verse blurs the line between the ordinary and the legendary, capturing the intense interior life of a precocious observer.
The Log of the Water Wagon
Bert Leston Taylor
The struggle for sobriety is rarely a smooth voyage, and this satirical logbook captures the absurd, thirsty, and often hilarious desperation of those clinging to the "Water Wagon.
Travelers Five Along Life's Highway: Jimmy, Gideon Wiggan, the Clown, Wexley Snathers, Bap. Sloan
Annie F. (Annie Fellows) Johnston
Five distinct lives intersect with the quiet, transformative power of ordinary experiences, revealing that the most significant journeys often take place within the boundaries of a single human heart. These stories trace the fragile hopes of those living on the fringes of society.
Under Orders: The story of a young reporter
Kirk Munroe
A young collegiate athlete leaves his studies to pursue a career as a New York newspaper reporter, only to find himself framed for a crime while covering a volatile labor strike.
A Handy Guide for Beggars: Especially Those of the Poetic Fraternity: Being Sundry Explorations, Made While Afoot and Penniless in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. These Adventures Convey and Illustrate the Rules of Beggary for Poets and Some Others
Vachel Lindsay
A wanderer knocks at a stranger’s door in the dark, offering a poem in exchange for supper, a fireplace, and a night out of the rain.
A Passionate Pilgrim
Henry James
The American traveler’s romantic dream of an ancestral England collides with the harsh reality of a dying man’s obsession. This portrait of longing explores the profound, often painful, disconnect between the idealized past and the tangible present.
Brave and Bold
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
A spirited, resourceful boy finds his path to success blocked by a cruel rival and a series of professional setbacks, leading him on a desperate, worldwide quest to reclaim his family's lost fortune and honor.
Graham's Magazine, Vol. XIX, No. 3, September 1841
Various
A vivid slice of mid-nineteenth-century American print culture opens to reveal the sentimental poetry, dramatic naval fiction, dark humor, and sharp literary criticism that entertained the readers of 1841.
Myths and Legends of Our Own Land
Charles M. (Charles Montgomery) Skinner
These stories capture the restless spirit of a young nation, blending the ghosts of the American frontier with the echoes of colonial history and ancient indigenous lore.
Polly: A Christmas Recollection
Thomas Nelson Page
A warm, spirited young woman tries to soften her temperamental uncle’s iron heart when her devotion to him collides with her love for his headstrong young rival.
Rodney, the Overseer
Harry Castlemon
In the shadow of the American Civil War, petty vanity and grand posturing collide with the stark, unglamorous realities of a divided country.
The abandoned farm, and Connie's mistake
Mary Jane Holmes
Two distinct small-town American melodramas unravel secrets of identity, inheritance, and hidden romance across generations.
The First
Edward W. Ludwig
A forgotten pioneer chooses to keep a secret so humanity can preserve its joy and wonder on the eve of its official journey to the moon.
The Mettle of the Pasture
James Lane Allen
The pursuit of an untarnished ideal often masks a deeper, more fragile reality. This narrative examines how the weight of ancestry and the rigid expectations of a Kentucky society force young lovers to confront the consequences of their own pasts.
The moonshiners at Hoho-hebee Falls: 1895
Charles Egbert Craddock
A runaway mountain boy, a hidden still behind a waterfall, and a hypocritical uncle seeking a free clerk converge in the high Smoky Mountain ridges.
The Puritan Twins
Lucy Fitch Perkins
A boy’s frantic ride atop a runaway horse saves him from Indian captors in colonial Massachusetts.
The Stories of the Three Burglars
Frank R. Stockton
A homeowner captures three burglars in his library, only to find them eager to justify their criminal careers through increasingly elaborate and improbable tales of woe.
The Triflers
Frederick Orin Bartlett
Two aimless, wealthy socialites enter a marriage of convenience to preserve their freedom, only to discover that their shared charade has become an inescapable and life-altering reality.
Tiverton Tales
Alice Brown
Across twelve connected stories, a quiet New England village reveals how domestic routines, small rebellions, and buried memories illuminate the hidden dignity of human lives.
Torchy As A Pa
Sewell Ford
When a sharp-witted young secretary starts a family in 1910s New York, domestic life brings as much chaos and comedy as the corporate ladder.
Twenty-three and a half hours' leave
Mary Roberts Rinehart
A sharp-tongued sergeant bets his troop he can sit down to breakfast with his commanding general, only to lose his clothes, stumble into a spy ring, and find love on a single day of wartime leave.
White Magic: A Novel
David Graham Phillips
A determined heiress wages a relentless war of affection against a fiercely independent painter in the wild woods of northern New Jersey.
A Hazard of New Fortunes
William Dean Howells
A New York story of ambition, social ambition, and industrial conflict, Howells's masterpiece follows a quiet editor pulled into the orbit of a ruthless millionaire.