American Literature PDF

# American Literature ## Colonial / Pre-Revolutionary * **John Smith** - *Generall Historie of Virginia New England and the Summer Isles* * **William Bradford** - *History of Plimmoth Plantation* * **John Winthrop** - *History of New England* * **Increase Mather** - *An Essay for the Recording of...

# American Literature ## Colonial / Pre-Revolutionary * **John Smith** - *Generall Historie of Virginia New England and the Summer Isles* * **William Bradford** - *History of Plimmoth Plantation* * **John Winthrop** - *History of New England* * **Increase Mather** - *An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences* * **Cotton Mather** - *Magnalia Christi Americana: The Ecclesiastical History of NE from its First Planting* * **Thomas Morton** - *New English Canaan* * **John Mason** - *Brief History of the Pequod War* * **Mary Rowlandson** - (wrote about captivity by Wampanoags under King Philip [Metacomet, son of Massasoit]) * **Thomas Weld, Richard Mather, John Eliot** - *Bay Psalm Book* (Whole Book of Psalms Faithfully Translated into English Meter) * **Anne Bradstreet** - *Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America* (poems including *A Dialogue between Old England and New, Four Elements, Four Constitutions, Four Ages of Man, Four Seasons, Four Monarchies, and Contemplations*) * **Edward Taylor** - *Poetcial Works, God's Determinations Touching His Elect* * **Michael Wigglesworth** - *Day of Doom* (sinners and unbaptized infants condemned to Hell on Day of Judgement) * **George Alsop** - *A Character of the Province of Maryland* * **Daniel Denton** - *A Brief Description of New York* * **Jonathan Edwards** - *Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, Freedom of the Will* * **William Byrd** - *History of the Dividing Line, Secret Diary, Another Secret Diary* * **Lucy Terry** - (first by black American) *Bar's Fight August 28 1746* * **Jupiter Hammon** - (black slave) *An Evening Thought Salvation by Christ with Penitential Cries* * **Phillis Wheatley** - (first famous black) *Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral* * **?** - *Publick Occurrences* (first newspaper, Boston, 1690) * **John Campbell** - *Boston News-Leter* (first regular newspaper, 1704) * **Andrew Bradford** - *American Magazine* (one of first two magazines, 1741) * **Benjamin Franklin** - *General Magazine and Historical Chronicle* (one of first two magazines, 1741), *Autobiography, Poor Richard's Almanack* (Richard Saunders) * **Crevecoeur (J. Hector St. John)** - *Letters from an American Farmer* ## Revolutionary and Late 1700s * **John Jay, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton** - *The Federalist* * **Thomas Paine** - *Common Sense, Crisis, Age of Reason* (controversial book expounding deism), *The Rights of Man* (defends French Revolution) * **Hartford Wits** * **John Trumbull** - *M'Fingal* (American Revolution: Scotch-American Tory orator M'Fingal is tarred and feathered and repents) * **Timothy Dwight** (grandson of Jonathan Edwards) - *The Conquest of Canaan, The Triumph of Infidelity, Greenfield Hill* * **Joel Barlow** - *Hasty Pudding* * **Philip Freneau** - *House of Night* * **Olaudah Equiano** - (freed slave) *The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Gustavus Vassa the African* * **William Brown** - *Power of Sympathy* (first American novel; Harrington can't marry Harriot Fawcett because she is his half-sister; both die) * **Hugh Henry Brackenridge** - *Modern Chivalry* (Captain Farrago and Teague O'Regan travel, seeing unqualified office holders, including Teague) * **Charles Brown** - *Wieland or the Transformation* (first American novel popular in Europe), *Arthur Mervyn, Edgar Huntly* ## Early 1800s - First Nationalist Period / Romanticism * **Washington Irving** - (the "American Goldsmith") * *A History of New York by Diedrich Knickerbocker* (satire of historians), * *Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon* (including *Rip Van Winkle* [Rip Van Winkle drinks from dwarf's keg with dog Wolf in Catskills and sleeps for 20 years; like German Peter Klaus], *Sleepy Hollow* [schoolmater Ichabod Crane loves Katrina Van Tassel but is scared away by rival Brom Bones who masquerades as headless horseman]), * *The Alhambra, * *A Tour of the Praires, * *biographies of Columbus and Washington* * **William Cullen Bryant** - *Thanatopsis, Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood, edited New York Post* * **James Fenimore Cooper** - * *Leatherstocking series:* * *Pioneers* (Templeton, NY: Natty Bumppo punished for killing deer while others kill many pigeons; Elizabeth Temple marries Edward Effingham, resolving question of Judge Temple's lands), * *Last of the Mohicans* (Alice and Cora Munro try to join father at Fort William Henry; opposed by Hurons under Magua; Uncas, his dad Delaware Chief Chingachgook, and Hawkeye [Natty Bumppo] oppose Hurons), * *Prairie* (old Natty Bumppo dies; Ishmael Bush squatters), * *Pathfinder* (Pathfinder dumps Mabel Dunham when he learns she loves suspected but vindicated traitor Jasper Western; Indian heroine Dew-of-June), * *Deerslayer* (Lake Otsego [Glimmerglass], NY: Natty Bumppo and Hurry Harry March fight Hurons; Judith Hunter fails to interest Natty); * *Littlepage Manuscripts* (Satanstoe, The Chainbearer, The Redskins; tenants of NY patrons refuse to pay rent) * *Pilot, Spy, * * **Cambridge Poets** * **Henry Wadsworth Longfellow** - * *Evangeline* (Gabriel Lajeunesse sent to LA and Evangeline Bellefontaine to NE when Acadians expelled from Nova Scotia; meet again in Philadelphia where she is nurse and he dies), * *Song of Hiawatha* (Ojibway Indian Hiawatha raised by grandmother Nokomis, daughter of the moon; revenges mom Wenonah against dad West Wind; teaches peace with whites; wife Minnehaha becomes ill and they go to Northwest Wind), * *Courtship of Miles Standish* (Plymouth Plantation: shy military man Miles Standish asks John Alden to woo Priscilla Mullins for him, but she marries John instead, and Miles gives blessing), * *translated the Divine Comedy, * *My Lost Youth* (youth in Portland ME), * *Village Blacksmith, * *The Building of the Ship, * *The Children's Hour, * *The Wreck of the Hesperus, * *Tales of a Wayside Inn* (collection of poems in style of Canterbury Tales; includes Paul Revere's Ride, Elizabeth, The Battle of Carmilhan, Emma and Eginhard, The Saga of King Olaf) * **James Russell Lowell** - *The Biglow Papers, Harvard Commemoration Ode* (in honor of Civil War dead), *Among My Books, A Fable for Critics, edited the Atlantic Monthly* * **Oliver Wendell Holmes** - * *Autocrat of the Breakfast Table; * *The Chambered Nautilus* (sea creature enlarges its shell as it grows), * *The Deacon's Masterpiece or The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay* (shay fell apart, satirizing Calvinist permanence), * *Elsie Venner A Romance of Destiny* (Elsie Venner has serpentine qualities because mom was bitten by snake; loves Bernard Langdon but she dies), * *Old Ironsides* (saved USS Constitution from being scrapped) * **John Greenleaf Whittier** - (sometimes included in Cambridge Poets) *Snow-Bound, Massachusetts to Virginia* (anti-slavery), *Barbara Frietchie, Maud Muller* (judge and Maude meet; "It might have been"), *Telling the Bees* * **Frederick Douglass** - (escaped slave) - *Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave, My Bondage and My Freedom, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass* * **William Wells Brown** - (escaped slave) - *Clotel* (about racial intermarriage, first novel by black American) * **Ralph Waldo Emerson** - *The American Scholar, Nature, Address at Divinity College* (stressed Christ's humanity and man's divinity), *Essays, Self-Reliance, Compensation* (evil and good balance each other), *Concord Hymn, Days, Merlin, The Over-Soul, Representative Men* (Shakespeare, Plato, Goethe, Swedenborg, Napoleon, Montaigne) * **Henry David Thoreau** - *Walden or Life in the Woods* (about simple life near Concord NH), *Civil Disobedience* ("that government is best which governs least"), *Life Without Principle* * **Count Alexis de Tocqueville** - *Democracy in America* * **Nathaniel Hawthorne** - * *The Scarlet Letter* (Salem: Hestor Prynne forced to wear A for committing adultery but won't reveal dad's name; physician husband Richard Chillingsworth suspects minister Arthur Dimmesdale, who dies after confessing; daughter Pearl finally cries), * *Twice-Told Tales* (tales including *Howe's Masquerade, The Grey Champion, The Great Carbuncle, and The Minister's Black Veil*; title from King John), * *Mosses from an Old Manse* (25 stories including *Young Goodman Brown* [Puritan Brown, led by old man, observes wife Faith at a witches' Sabbath in the woods and returns to Salem a sad man], *The Birthmark* [Aylmer removes birthmark from perfect wife Georgiana, killing her], *Rappaccini's Daughter* [doctor Rappaccini nourishes daughter Beatrice on poisons so she may help with dangerous plant experiments; she dies drinking antidote from faithless suitor], and *The Celestial Railroad*), * *House of the Seven Gables* (Salem: Colonel Pyncheon obtained land for House of Seven Gables by accusing owner Matthew Maule of witchcraft; Maule cursed Pyncheons; Clifford Pyncheon jailed for murder of uncle actually committed by Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon; Phoebe and Holgrave, a descendant of Maule, fall in love and break the curse), * *Marble Faun* (Italian count Donatello loves Miriam and kills her pursuer Antonio; artist Hilda witnesses murder, confesses to priest, and loves Kenyon), * *Blithedale Romance* (based on Brook Farm; Miles Coverdale narrates; Zenobia loves Hollingsworth who loves Priscilla), * *Fanshawe* (Fanshawe loves Ellen Langdon, ward of Harley College President Dr. Melmoth but gives her to man she loves and dies; modeled on Bowdoin), * *The Dolliver Romance* (unfinished; Dr. Dolliver makes elixir to care for granddaughter Pansie but Colonel Dabney wants it for selfish reasons and dies), * *Tanglewood Tales* * **Herman Melville** - * *Typee A Peep at Polynesian Life* (hero and friend Toby jump ship in Marquesas Islands and wander into valley of Typee where cannibals capture them; Fayaway nurses hero but he chooses to return to civilization), * *Omoo A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas* (crew of Julia is imprisoned on Tahiti; hero and fried Doctor Long Ghost are released and explore the island), * *Mardi and a Voyage Thither* (5 men sail through Mardi on King Media's boat; stop in Vivenza [US]; Taji kills priest Aleema to rescue Yillah; Hautia seeks Taji; others include philosopher Babbalanja, poet Yoomy, and historian Mohi), * *Moby-Dick or the White Whale* (monomaniacal Captain Ahab pursues Moby-Dick; others on the Pequod include God-fearing Starbuck, Stubb, harpooners Queequeg, Daggoo, and Tashtego, black Pip, and fire-worshipping Parsee; only narrator Ishmael survives), * *Pierre or the Ambiguities* (writer Pierre Glendinning leaves mom and fiance Lucy Tartan for illegitimate sister, whom he comes to love; commits suicide in prison), * *White Jacket or The World in a Man-of-War* (white jacket nearly drowns narrator when he falls into water; Jack Chase appears on US Navy man-of-war; brutal floggings condemned) * *Billy Budd Foretopman* (Claggart falsely accuses Billy; Billy kills Claggart; Captain Vere reluctantly hangs Billy), * *Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War, * *Clarel A Poem and A Pilgrimage in the Holy Land* (theological student Clarel loves Jew Ruth while in Holy Land), * *The Confidence-Man His Masquerade* (Fidele MS River boat on April Fool's Day; no plot), * *The Piazza Tales* (short stories including *The Bell Tower* [artist Bannadonna rivals God], *The Lightning-Rod Man* [man refuses to buy lightning-rod because he does not control or fear God], *The Enchanted Isles* [sketches based on Galapagos Islands], *Benito Cerreno, Bartleby the Scrivener* [Bartleby refuses to do his job proofreading legal documents, is imprisoned, and starves]), * **Edgar Allan Poe** - * *Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque* (stories including *The Fall of the House of Usher* [narrator visits Roderick Usher; twin sister Madeline Usher emerges from burial vault; house and family destroyed] and *Berenice*), * *The Murders in the Rue Morgue* (detective C. Auguste Dupin discovers a mother and daughter were murdered by an "Ourang-Outang"), * *The Pit and the Pendulum* (victim of Spanish Inquisition escapes prison by falling into a pit; rats save him from knife-swinging pendulum; rescued by opposing army), * *The Purloined Letter* (C. Auguste Dupin solves case of royal woman blackmailed by a cabinet minister on the basis of a compromising letter), * *The Raven* (poet is startled by raven tapping at chamber door; raven perches on bust of Pallas Athene and answers questions about dead lover "Nevermore"), * *The Tell-Tale Heart* (murderer hides body of victim under floor but hears a beating heart and confesses), * *Ulalume* (narrator and his soul walk in woodland on Halloween following Venus and are stopped by door of forgotten tomb of beloved Ulalume), * *Annabel Lee, * *The Bells, * *The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym* (NE boy steals away on a whaler; drifts towards South Pole in a canoe), * *Ligeia* (Ligeia dies and husband marries Rowena, who dies and turns into Ligeia), * *The Golden Bug* (Sullivan's Island SC: William Le Grand discovers cipher telling of buried treasure, and drops beetle through one eye of a skull), * *The Masque of the Red Death* (castle masquerade ball during Plague years: Prince Prospero), * *The City in the Sea* * **Walt Whitman** - *Leaves of Grass* (including *When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, O Captain My Captain* [both about Abraham Lincoln's death], and *Song of Myself* ["a uniform hieroglyphic" grass, "barbaric yawp", "look for me under your bootsoles", "origin of all poems", reading it is "good health"]), *Drum-Taps, Democratic Vistas* (alarmed at superficial US), *Specimen Days & Collect, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, Song of the Open Road* ## Late 1800s - Realism. Later Naturalism * **Abraham Lincoln** - *Gettysburg Address, Second Inaugural Address* * **Harriet Beecher Stowe** - *Uncle Tom's Cabin: Life Among the Lowly* (Vermonter plantation owner Simon Legree beats slave Uncle Tom to death; Uncle Tom cared for owner Augustine St. Clare's daughter Little Eva; others include mulatto Eliza, impish black child Topsy, Miss Ophelia St. Clare, and slave catcher Marks) * **George Washington Cable** - *Old Creole Days, The Grandissimes A Story of Creole Live* (Frowenfeld learns of De Grapion vs. Grandissimes family feud; African king Bras Coupe tortured to death) * **Joel Chandler Harris** - *Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings* (black servant tells white boy tales involving Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, Brer Bear, and Tar Baby) * **Francis Hopkinson Smith** - *Colonel Carter of Cartersville* * **Kate O'Flaherty Chopin** - *The Awakening* * **Sarah Orne Jewett** - *The Country of the Pointed Firs* * **Bret Harte** - *The Luck of the Roaring Camp* (miners adopt Thomas Luck, son of dying prostitute Cherokee Sal, but he dies in Kentuck's arms in flood), *The Outcast of Poker Flat* (gambler John Oakhurst, two prostitutes, and a drunkard sacrifice themselves in a blizzard to save young eloping couple) * **Joaquin Miller** - (poems) * **James Whitcomb Riley** - *Little Orphan Annie, The Raggedy Man* (boy admires farm hand) * **Sidney Lanier** - *The Marshes of Glynn* (sea marshes of Glynn County GA), *The Revenge of Hamish* * **George Santayana** - *Sonnets and Other Verses, The Last Puritan* (A Memoir in the Form of a Novel; Puritan Oliver Alden out of place in 1900s) * **Paul Laurence Dunbar** - *Lyrics of a Lowly Life* * **Emily Dickinson** - *Poems* (not famous until long after her death) ## Humor Writers * **Josh Billings** - *Josh Billings His Sayings* * **Petroleum V. Nasby** - *The Nasby Papers* * **Artemus Ward** - *Artemus Ward His Book* * **Finley Peter Dunne** - *Mr. Dooley's Opinions* * **Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain)** - * *The Celbrated Jumping Fog of Calaveras County* (Simon Wheeler narrators, Jim Smiley bets his frog Dan'l Webster can outjump any; stranger pours quail shot in frog), * *The Innocents Abroad* (travel letters from Europe; burlesqued sentimental travel books), * *Roughing It, * *Life on the Mississippi* (autobiographical; river loses its romance over 7 years), * *The Adventures of Tom Sawyer* (Tom Sawyer, cared for by Aunt Polly, and friend Huck Finn witness murder by Injun Joe in cemetery but run away in fear to Jackson's Island; they return to witness their funerals; Tom testifies at trial of falsely accused Muff Potter; Tom and Becky Thatcher get lost in cave with Injun Joe but escape), * *The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn* (narrated by Huck, who escapes from drunken father and journeys down Mississippi River with runaway slave Jim), * *Pudd'nhead Wilson* (lawyer David Wilson exposes that Roxy's mulatto son murdered his uncle and accused Luigi), * *A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, * *Tom Sawyer Detective, * *The Gilded Age, * *The Mysterious Stranger* (Satan disguised as Philip Traum disillusions boy in 1590 Eseldorf Austria), * *The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg* (stranger leaves sack of money [actually lead] in a bank in Hadleyburg and sends letters to 19 telling them how to claim it), * *The Prince and the Pauper* (Edward VI and pauper Tom Canty switch places for several days), * *1601* ("Conversation as It Was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors") * **Louisa May Alcott** - * *Little Women* (Meg mares tutor John Brooke; Beth likes music but dies young; fashionable Amy marries Laurie; tomboyish and literary Jo marries German professor Mr. Bhaer), * *Little Men* (Meg and John Brooke have twins Daisy and Demi), * *Jo's Boys* (Jo and Mr. Bhaer turn their home into school for boys) * **William Dean Howells** - * *Criticism and Fiction, * *A Modern Instance* (Squire Gaylord tries to prevent Bartley Hubbard from divorcing his daughter Marcia; Ben Halleck debates marrying divorced Marcia), * *The Rise of Silas Lapham* (Silas Lapham and wife Persis grow rich from Back Bay paint mine on his farm and build home on Beacon Hill and try to acclimate to rich social scene; daughter Penelope marries Tom Corey and goes to Mexico; family is financially ruined), * *A Hazard of New Fortunes* (Dryfoos moves to NY and makes son Conrad publisher of a magazine; Basil March refuses to fire a socialist; Conrad is killed in a labor riot), * *A Chance Acquaintance* (Kitty Ellison loves Miles Arbuton as they travel on St. Lawrence River but he ignores her), * *A Traveller from Altruria* (Aristides Homos likes utopia Altruria with democratic Christian socialist government) * **Deam Hamlin Garland** - *Main-Traveled Roads* * **Stephen Crane** - * *The Red Badge of Courage* (study of fear in US Civil War soldier Henry Fleming), * *Maggie A Girl of the Streets* (Maggie Johnson in NY slums is seduced by bartender Pete, becomes a prostitute, and commits suicide), * *The Open Boat* (captain, cook, oiler, and correspondent escape sinking ship on small boat; oiler dies as they come ashore), * *The Black Riders and Other Lines, * *War Is Kind* (poems, including Do Not Weep Maiden for War Is Kind), * *Whilomville Stores* (stories set in Port Jervis NY; in Lynx-Hunting Jimmie Trescott shoots a cow), * *The Blue Hotel* (Swede comes to Nebraska looking for romantic violence), * *The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky* (Sheriff Jack Potter, who has no gun, encounters Scratchy Wilson) * **Frank Norris** - *The Octopus* (CA wheat farmers battle the railroad; love affair of Vanamee; *The Pit* sequel), *McTeague* (McTeague prevented from practicing dentistry and murders wife Trina who had won $5000 in a lottery; he kills Marcus Schouler but is handcuffed to the corpse and dies of thirst in the desert) * **Helen Hunt Jackson** - *A Century of Dishonor* (US treatment of Indians), *Ramona* (Scottish-Indian Ramona elopes with Indian Alessandro) * **Ambrose Gwinett Bierce** - *In the Midst of Life* (26 stories; young soldiers die), *The Devil's Dictionary* * **Jacob Riis** - *How the Other Half Lives* * **Jack London** * *The Sea Wolf* (literary critic Humphrey Van Weyden is shipwrecked in SF Bay and rescued by Wolf Larsen on the Ghost, who makes him work as cabin boy; Maude Brewster also rescued; Ghost wrecks and blinded Larsen prevents its repair), * *The Call of the Wild* (dog Buck taken from CA to Klondike; kills lead dog Spitz; owner John Thornton killed by Indians), * *White Fang* (wolf-dog White Fang is abused by first owner but rescued and tamed by mining engineer Weedon Scott in CA; Fang defends Scott from convict), * *Martin Eden* * **David Graham Phillips** - *Susan Lenox Her Fall and Rise* * **Upton Sinclair** - *The Jungle* (Lithuanian immigrant Jurgis Rudkus and wife Ono work in early 1900s Chicago stockyard) * **Theodore Dreiser** - * *Sister Carrie* (country girl Carrie Meeber saved from cruel 1890s Chicago by salesman Charles Drouet; George Hurstwood takes her to NY and she becomes actress but he kills self), * *Trilogy* * *The Financier* (magnate Frank Cowperwood watches lobster devour a squid; caught in stock crash and imprisoned; goes to Chicago to try again), * *The Titan* (Frank Cowperwood marries Aileen Butler and tries to gain monopoly of utilities in Chicago; citizens foil plans and he goes to Europe with Berenice Fleming, daughter of a Louisville madam), * *The Stoic, * * *An American Tragedy* (Clyde Griffiths seduces Roberta Alden but loves Sondra Finchly; plans to murder Roberta but lacks the courage; fails to rescue Roberta when boat overturns; charged with murder; based on story of Chester Gillette and Grace Brown 1906) * **Henry James** - * *The American* (Christopher Newman, an unsophisticated American, loves Claire de Bellegarde but opposed by aristocratic family; he decides not to reveal her mom and brother murdered her father), * *The Aspern Papers* (former mistress of poet Jeffrey Aspern won't let his poems be published), * *The Awkward Age* (Nanda Brookenham and her mom love Vanderbank), * *The Bostonians* (post-Civil War Boston: Olive Chancellor, a radical feminist, and Basil Ransom, a MS Confederate veteran, compete for Verena Tarrant; Miss Birdseye), disillusioned but stays to raise Pansy, daughter of Gilbert and Madame Merle), * *The Wings of the Dove* (Kate Croy loves English journalist Merton Densher but gets him to marry dying friend Milly Theale to inherit her money; Densher cannot accept money or promise he doesn't love memory of Milly so Kate leaves), * *The Ambassadors* (New England and France: Lambert Strether sent to Paris by fiance Mrs. Newsome to get her son Chad who loves Madame de Vionnet), * *The Golden Bowl* (Prince Amerigo marries Maggie Verver but has affair with Maggie's friend Charlotte Stant; Charlotte marries Maggie's dad Adam Verver), * *The Turn of the Screw* (governess, in love with employer, cares for orphans Miles and Flora, who are under evil influence of the ghosts of Peter Quint, ex-stewart, and Miss Jessel, ex-governess), * *Roderick Hudson* (American sculptor Roderick Hudson, who loves Christina Light, goes to Rome and becomes disillusioned), * *The Princess of Casamassima* (Princess Casamassima, formerly Christiana Light, studies poverty in London and meets radical Hyacinth Robinson), * *The Passionate Pilgrim and Other Stories* (Clement Searle goes to England to claim rich estate but dies), * *The Spoils of Pynton* (Owen Gereth refuses to marry Fleda Vetch so his mom removes art treasures from his house; he marries Mona Brigstock and offers Fleda art but house burns down), * *What Maisie Knew* (12-year-old Maisie Farange spends 6 months with each of divorced parents, each of whom are remarried and having affairs again), * *Notes on Novelists, * *The Sacred Fount* (older partner is refreshed and younger depleted in marriage), * *The Art of the Novel, * *Daisy Miller* (narrator Frederick Winterbourne regrets rigid adherence to European conventions when Daisy Miller dies of Roman fever), * *The Europeans* (artist Felix Young and his sister Baroness Munster visit relatives the Wentworths in Boston) * **WEB Du Bois** - *Souls of Black Folk, The Quest for the Silver Fleece* * **Frank J. Webb** - *The Garies and Their Friends* * **Sutton Griggs** - *Imperium in Imperio* * **Charles Chesnutt** - *The Conjure Woman, The Marrow of a Tradition* * **James Parton** - biographies of Greeley, Jefferson, and others * **George Bancroft** - *History of the United States* * **William Hickling Prescott** - *History of the Conquest of Mexico* * **Henry Brooks Adams** - *History of the United States During the Administration of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, The Education of Henry Adams* * **Henry George** - (economist) *Progress and Poverty* * **Edward Bellamy** - *Looking Backward 2000-1887* * **Henry Charles Corey** - (economist) *Past Present and Future* * **Lester Frank Ward** - *Dynamic Sociology* * **William James** - *The Principles of Psychology, The Will to Believe* ## Twentieth Century ### Major Authors and Poets * **Edith Wharton** - * *The House of Mirth* (orphan Lily Bart loves Lawrence Seldon but reject him because he is poor; blackmailed and falsely accused by other men; becomes milliner and takes overdose of sleeping pills), * *The Age of Innocence* (NY 1870s: Neland Archer marries May Welland but loves her cousin Ellen Olenska), * *Ethan Frome* (MA farm: farmer Ethan Frome marries whining hypochondriac Zeena but loves her cousin Mattie; Ethan and Mattie injured in bobsled suicide attempt; Zeena becomes devoted nurse and Mattie becomes nag), * *The Custom of the Country* (Undine Spragg samples pleasures, marries millionaire from hometown), * *Old New York* (4 novellas about 1840 to 1880, including *False Dawn* [Lewis Raycie buys modern pictures], *The Old Maid* [Charlotte Lovell's cousin raises her illegitimate daughter Tina], *The Spark* [Walt Whitman influences old man], *New Year's Day* [wife sacrifices for sick husband]) * **Willa Cather** - * *A Lost Lady* (Marian Forrester's pioneer husband dies and she becomes mistress of Ivy Peters; Niel Herbert adores her; she disappears to South America), * *Death Comes for the Archbishop* (Jean Latour and Father Joseph Vaillant establish diocese in NM), * *My Antonia* (Bohemian immigrant Antonia Shimerda works on farms after father's suicide, elopes with railway conductor, and marries farmer Anton Cuzak; others include lawyer Jim Burden), * *O Pioneers* (Alexandra Bergson takes over NE farm when dad dies; brother Emil killed; marries Carl Linstrum), * *One of Ours* (Claude Wheeler grows up on Western farm, goes to college, killed in army in France), * *The Song of the Lark* (Coloradoan Thea Kronborg, daughter of Swedish clergyman, goes to Chicago, has affair with Fred Ottenburg, and becomes soprano at Met. Opera House in NY), * *Alexander's Bridge, * *Youth and the Bright Medusa* (stories, including Paul's Case) * **Sherwood Anderson** - *Winesburg Ohio* (23 stories; reporter George Willard develops), *Dark Laughter, The Triumph of the Egg* (chicken farmer is unable to perform simple trick with an egg) * **Sinclair Lewis** (first American to win Nobel Prize) - * *Main Street* (Carol Kennicott tires of physician husband Will and tries to bring culture to dull Gopher Praire, MN [based on Sauk Centre]), * *Dodsworth, * *Arrowsmith* (Martin Arrowsmith, a bacteriologist, goes to VT farm and West Indies), * *Babbit* (Zenith, the Zip City: George F. Babbitt, real estate broker, fears ostracism but encourages son Tom to rebel), * *Elmer Gantry* (Kansas City: ex-football player Elmer Gantry becomes popular but hypocritical minister) * *It Can't Happen Here* (Berzelius Windrip sets up fascist dictatorship in US; Doremus Jessup and Walt Trowbridge in Canada oppose him) * **Ernest Hemingway** - * *The Sun Also Rises* (Lost Generation 1925 France: journalist Jake Barnes narrates; Lady Brett Ashley is divorcing and may love Jake but plans to marry Michael Campbell and has affair with Spanish bullfighter Pedro Romero in Pamplona; others include Greek Bill Gorton and American-Jewish writer Robert Cohn), * *A Farewell to Arms* (WWI ambulance driver Lt. Frederic Henry loves English nurse Catherine Barkley, who becomes pregnant; Henry deserts after Caporetto in Italy and they go to Switzerland, where she dies), * *In Our Time* (short stories about Nick Adams, including Indian Camp and Big Two-Hearted River), * *Men Without Women* (short stories including *The Killers* [Nick Adams warns Ole Andreson that two hired gunmen from city are coming to kill him], *The Undefeated, Fifty Grand, Hills Like White Elephants, A Simple Inquiry*), * *For Whom the Bell Tolls* (Spanish Civil War: American professor Robert Jordan assigned by Pablo and Pilar to blow up a bridge; Jordan loves Maria for three days; Jordan carries out mission but is left to die; title from Donne's Devotions upon Emergent Occasions), * *The Old Man and the Sea* (Cuban fisherman Santiago catches marlin on 85th day but it is slowly eaten by sharks on way home), * *The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber* (English guide Wilson saves Macombers from lion on African safari; next day Macomber fights wild buffalo but wife shoots him), * *The Snows of Kilimanjaro* (writer Harry goes on African safari to "work fat off his mind" but gets gangrene, sees vision of a frozen leopard, and dies), * *To Have and Have Not* (Harry Morgan smuggles Chinese and liquor in Key West during Depression and is shot) * **F. Scott Fitzgerald** - * *The Great Gatsby* (Jazz Age Long Island: Jay Gatsby loves Daisy Buchanan, cousin of narrator Nick Carraway, but she stays with husband Tom; Daisy runs over Tom's mistress Myrtle Wilson and Tom shoots Jay), * *Tender Is the Night* (wealthy schizophrenic Nicole Warren marries her psychiatrist Dick Diver; she becomes mentally stable but he deteriorates; she leaves him for a lover), * *This Side of Paradise* (spoiled Middle Westerner Amory Blaine goes to Princeton and joins literary cults; loves Rosaline Commase but is rejected; serves in WWI; starts career in advertising) * **Stephen Vincent Benet** - *The Devil and Daniel Webster* (NE farmer Jabez Stone sells his soul to the devil but is saved by Webster's oratory before demonic jury, *John Brown's Body* (Civil War narrative beginning with Harper's Ferry), *Western Star* * **John Steinbeck** - * *Of Mice and Men* (strong giant half-wit migrant worker Lennie accidentally kills woman who seduces him and is shot by friend George to protect him from lynch mob), * *The Grapes of Wrath* (Joad family travels from OK to CA during the Great Depression to find work picking fruit; Tom Joad becomes involved in strikes and kills a man; Rose of Sharon has baby), * *Travels with Charlie, * *In Dubious Battle* (Communist Mac's friend Jim Nolan murdered; Doc Burton helps striking CA fruit pickers), * *East of Eden* (Salinas Valley: Adam Trask and Cathy have two sons; Cal kills Aron by telling him mom is a prostitute), * *Tortilla Flat* (carefree Danny meets with simple friends Pablo, Big Joe Portagee, Jesus Maria Corcoran, and Pirate in his home, "like the Round Table"), * *The Pearl* (CA Indian pearl-fisher and wife Juana's baby bitten by scorpion; they pay doctor with large pearl) * **John Dos Passos** - * *USA Trilogy* (panoramic picture of US life from just before WWI to Great Depression; *The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money*; consists of "newsreels," "camera eyes," and biographies), * *Manhattan Transfer* (NYC: journalist Jimmy Herf and actress wife Ellen Thatcher divorce; Bud Korpenning commits suicide; gambler Joe Harland becomes beggar), * *Three Soldiers* (3 American WWI soldiers: Italian Dan Fuselli, Indianan Chrisfield, musician John Andrews) * **Thomas Clayton Wolfe** - * *Look Homeward Angel* (describes youth of Eugene Gant in Altamont, Catawba [based on Asheville, NC]; Eugene attends mother's boarding house, has romance, and goes to college; brother Ben Gant dies at St.Louis World's Fair), * *Of Time and the River* (Eugene Gant studies drama at Harvard under James Hatcher; dad dies; tours France; teaches literature in NYC), * *The