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American Literature — page 92
4,619 public-domain american literature books, summarised. Page 92 of 97.

The Yale Literary Magazine (Vol. I, No. 4, June 1836)
Various
This collection of student writing captures the intellectual anxieties, literary ambitions, and romantic sensibilities of mid-19th-century Yale, offering an unfiltered look at a vanished collegiate world.

An episode in the doings of the dualized
Eveleen Laura Mason
This narrative centers on a woman with an extraordinary, almost supernatural, sense of purpose who works to mend the fractured spirits of those around her. It is a contemplative study of human consciousness, spiritual evolution, and the rejection of social convention in favor of a higher, "dualized" existence.

Armazindy: The Poems and Prose Sketches of James Whitcomb Riley
James Whitcomb Riley
A collection of verse and prose that captures the rustic charm, poignant loss, and fleeting joys of nineteenth-century Midwestern life.

Bad and mad
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
The desert sun reveals a grim irony when a drifter attempts to steal a lawman’s identity, only to discover that the lawman he left for dead was already a fugitive from his own reality.

Christmas Eve at Swamp's End
Norman Duncan
A lonely girl finds her deepest wish granted by a rough-hewn minister in the heart of a frozen, unforgiving wilderness.

Dorothy Harcourt's secret
Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
A woman of independent means opens her heart to a lost child, only to find herself embroiled in a dangerous game of abduction orchestrated by a relentless, manipulative suitor from her past.

First Base Faulkner
Christy Mathewson
The story of a young man finding his place in a new city through grit, baseball, and honest enterprise. A classic tale of coming-of-age that captures the spirit of small-town athletics and ambition.

Frank Merriwell's Marriage
Burt L. Standish
The quintessential American hero navigates a gauntlet of jealous rivals and physical trials, proving his mettle in sport and character before finally claiming his bride at the altar.

Gloria and Treeless Street
Annie Hamilton Donnell
A sheltered young heiress discovers a decrepit tenement street and resolves to fix it, only to learn that her own inherited wealth is the source of the misery she seeks to cure.

Marie
Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
A wandering young musician finds refuge in a rigid New England village, where her vibrant spirit clashes with the austere convictions of a man bound by his ancestors' stern faith. Their unlikely union becomes a crucible of silence, misunderstanding, and the painful search for common ground.

Sketches New and Old, Part 3
Mark Twain
This collection captures the sharp, irreverent wit of a writer navigating the absurdity of American life, from the moral contradictions of the frontier to the hollow pretensions of bureaucrats and self-styled intellectuals.

The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World
Margaret Vandercook
A young woman carrying three unlit silver candles down a cold hallway must decide whether to give up her family home on Thanksgiving Day.

The Children of Cupa
Mary Ellen Mannix
An American family’s summer camping trip in the California mountains becomes a poignant witness to the forced displacement of the Cupeño people from their ancestral hot springs.

The Consul
Richard Harding Davis
The long, loyal career of an aging diplomat comes to a quiet end—or a dramatic beginning—in a fever-ridden port. This story of principle, political patronage, and the weight of one’s own conscience remains a poignant reflection on public service.

The Daughter of a Republican
Bernie Babcock
A young woman awakens to the moral rot of her era, turning against her father’s political allegiances to battle the liquor industry and the human misery it fosters.

"The Fotygraft Album": Shown to the New Neighbor by Rebecca Sparks Peters Aged Eleven
Francis Marion Wing
A young girl’s earnest tour through a family photo album reveals the absurdities of small-town life, filtered through the irreverent, biting commentary of her father.

The Henchman
Mark Lee Luther
Ambition and moral compromise collide in the cutthroat world of New York politics, where a rising star must decide if the price of power is worth the loss of his own integrity.

The Man Higher Up
William MacHarg
A brilliant psychologist employs cutting-edge physiological testing to dismantle a corrupt shipping empire, proving that the human body cannot lie even when the mind is masterfully deceptive.

The Philistine: a periodical of protest (Vol. III, No. 2, July 1896)
Various
This is a bracing, iconoclastic dispatches from the margins of late 19th-century American letters, where the spirit of the age is tested by wit, irony, and a fierce, restless independence.

The quare women
Lucy S. Furman
Outsiders arrive in a remote Kentucky mountain community with nothing but tents and a desire to teach, sparking a transformation that ripples through generations of feuding families.

The Trimming of Goosie
James Hopper
An athletic young husband inexplicably sprouts a pair of magnificent wings, forcing his practical wife to trim them so he can remain a respectable suburban commuter.

The Two Elsies: A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket
Martha Finley
In a world of rigid expectations and deep familial bonds, two young girls navigate the turbulent waters of grief, disobedience, and the challenging path toward self-control.

What Might Have Been Expected
Frank R. Stockton
A brother and sister embark on a series of industrious, homegrown ventures in rural Virginia to secure the well-being of a beloved elderly neighbor.

What Outfit, Buddy?
T. Howard (Thomas Howard) Kelly
A weary infantryman recounts the grueling, mud-caked reality of the Great War, finding brotherhood and tragedy in the shadow of the front lines.

And So They Were Married
Florence Morse Kingsley
A young bride learns that building a life together requires navigating social pretension and discovering what truly matters beneath the surface of urban sophistication.

Book of brief narratives
Unknown
An unnamed detective navigates a series of bizarre criminal cases, where mistaken identities and strange, localized customs often cloud the truth.

Brknk's Bounty
Jerry Sohl
Larry Weaver is a down-on-his-luck journalist who loses his job after a run-in with a peculiar, invisible nuisance. His life takes a bizarre turn when he discovers he has become the target of an otherworldly gift that changes his fate forever.

How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee
Owen Wister
A man of letters finds his orderly life besieged by a relentless campaign to modernize English spelling. What begins as a nuisance quickly spirals into a absurd, cross-country crusade led by a manipulative industrialist.

"Same old Bill, eh Mable!"
Edward Streeter
Through a series of breezy, ungrammatical letters, a young soldier navigates the absurdities of the Great War, finding that the bureaucracy of the army is often more baffling than the enemy lines.

The schoolmaster's trunk, containing papers on home-life in Tweenit
Abby Morton Diaz
A schoolmaster observes the crushing domestic labor of a nineteenth-century village, arguing that women deserve more time for intellectual pursuits and child-rearing than the relentless preparation of elaborate food allows.

The town down the river
Edwin Arlington Robinson
A collection of precise, melancholic portraits, this work captures the quiet tragedy of lives spent chasing ghosts and the heavy wisdom of those who witness the inevitable decay of all things.

The Trysting Place: A Farce in One Act
Booth Tarkington
A secluded hotel lounge becomes the unwilling stage for overlapping secret romances, as a series of well-meaning but oblivious guests hide in the furniture to conduct private affairs.

Two Prisoners
Thomas Nelson Page
The story of two lonely souls separated by class but united by suffering, this tale explores how a single act of compassion can bridge the widest divides.

Feathers left around
Carolyn Wells
The quiet of a country house is shattered when a guest is found murdered, leaving a trail of cryptic clues for a master detective to unravel.

Mam' Lyddy's Recognition: 1908
Thomas Nelson Page
A fiercely loyal, aristocratic domestic servant discovers that the "recognition" promised to her by a smooth-talking urban preacher is a trap designed to steal her life’s savings.

Princess
M. G. (Mary Greenway) McClelland
A quiet study of the clash between long-held social codes and the fierce demands of individual desire, this narrative follows a young woman’s struggle to reconcile her conscience with a forbidden love.

Stephen H. Branch's Alligator, Vol. 1 no. 07, June 5, 1858
Unknown
This volatile periodical serves as both a blistering political manifesto and an eccentric, unvarnished autobiography from a self-proclaimed crusader operating on the fringes of mid-nineteenth-century New York journalism.

The Heart of the Hills
Fox, John, Jr.
Two young men from the stark Cumberland mountains and the genteel Kentucky Bluegrass grow to manhood, their lives intertwined by love, social upheaval, and the encroaching industrial decay of their land.

The Last American: A Fragment from the Journal of Khan-li, Prince of Dimph-yoo-chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy
John Ames Mitchell
An expedition from a future Persia arrives in North America to study the ruins of a fallen, long-forgotten civilization, only to encounter the final, tragic remnants of the American people.

The Young Bank Messenger
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
The Young Bank Messenger follows a resilient, orphaned boy who discovers his true identity while navigating a treacherous landscape of outlaws, hidden inheritances, and the struggle for personal integrity. It is a classic tale of rags-to-riches morality that pits the simple virtues of a young hero against the greed…

A Bad Town for Spacemen
Robert Scott
A returning space traveler discovers that New York, once a welcoming haven, has turned bleak, hostile, and visibly decayed during his absence among the stars.

An experiment in gyro-hats
Ellis Parker Butler
A meticulous hatter seeks to cure a young suitor's mysterious, perpetual staggering through the application of a high-tech gyroscope hat.

An Old Sweetheart of Mine
James Whitcomb Riley
A quiet evening at home turns into a tender voyage through time as a man lights his pipe and lets memory summon his very first love.

My Queen: A Weekly Journal for Young Women. Issue 3, October 13, 1900: Marion Marlowe's True Heart
Lurana Sheldon
A young country woman rescues her family from financial ruin before pursuing a medical career and navigating romance and city perils in New York.

New lives for old
Frederick Orin Bartlett
The city man who trades the desk for the plow finds a sleeping village and awakens it through sheer grit and cooperation.

Patty and Azalea
Carolyn Wells
A young woman from the West arrives at a refined East Coast estate, bringing with her a trail of secrets, impulsive behavior, and a dramatic flair that tests the patience and kindness of her newfound family.

Six little Bunkers at Aunt Jo's
Laura Lee Hope
A bustling summer in Boston brings everyday magic to a big family, where missing dolls, stray animals, and misplaced pocketbooks turn routine afternoons into grand childhood adventures.

Tales and Sketches: Part 3 from Volume V of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier
A collection of nineteenth-century observations, this work captures the flickering shadows and enduring light of a changing American landscape through the eyes of a deeply thoughtful observer.