Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain

Mark Twain's classic novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , tells the story of a teenaged misfit who finds himself floating on a raft down the Mississippi River with an escaping slave, Jim. In the course of their perilous journey, Huck and Jim meet adventure, danger, and a cast of characters who are sometimes menacing and often hilarious. Though some of the situations in Huckleberry Finn are... (more)

The Gilded Age: The Authorized Uniform Edition

The Gilded Age: The Authorized Uniform Edition

by Mark Twain

Introduction by Ron Powers Includes Newly Commissioned Endnotes Arguably the first major American novel to satirize the political milieu of Washington, D.C. and the wild speculation schemes that exploded across the nation in the years that followed the Civil War, The Gilded Age gave this remarkable era its name. Co-written by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, this rollicking novel is rife with unscrupulous... (more)

The Rise of Silas Lapham

by William Dean Howells

First published in book form in 1885, William Dean Howells's timeless epic of a self-made man, The Rise of Silas Lapham was the first important novel to center on the American businessman-and the first to treat its theme with a realism that was to foreshadow the work of modern writers.

The Big Money: Volume Three of the U.S.A. Trilogy

The Big Money: Volume Three of the U.S.A. Trilogy

by John Dos Passos

THE BIG MONEY completes John Dos Passos's three-volume "fable of America's materialistic success and moral decline" (American Heritage) and marks the end of "one of the most ambitious projects that an American novelist has ever undertaken" (Time). Here we come back to America after the war and find a nation on the upswing. Industrialism booms. The stock market surges. Lindbergh takes his solo flight. Henry Ford... (more)

The Lamplighter (American Women Writers)

The Lamplighter (American Women Writers)

by Maria S. Cummins

From a review by Erica Bauermeister: "Second only in sales to Uncle Tom's Cabin during the nineteenth century, The Lamplighter is almost completely unknown today, its very popularity having been used to condemn it in literary critical circles. It tells the story of the development of a young, orphaned girl into a resilient, capable young woman who gets her man."

The Town: A Novel of the Snopes Family

by William Faulkner

This is the second volume of Faulkner's trilogy about the Snopes family, his symbol for the grasping, destructive element in the post-bellum South. Like its predecessor The Hamlet and its successor The Mansion, The Town is completely self-contained, but it gains resonance from being read with the other two. The story of Flem Snopes' ruthless struggle to take over the town of Jefferson, Mississippi, the book is... (more)

Strange FruitLillian Smith

Strange Fruit

by Lillian Eugenia Smith

When it was first published in 1944, this novel sparked immediate controversy and became a huge bestseller. It captured with devastating accuracy the deep-seated racial conflicts of a tightly knit southern town. The book is as engrossing and incendiary now as the day it was written.

The Awakening, and Other Stories (Rinehart Editions, 142)

The Awakening, and Other Stories (Rinehart Editions, 142)

by Kate Chopin

The Awakening shocked turn-of-the-century readers with its forthright treatment of sex and suicide. Departing from literary convention, Kate Chopin failed to condemn her heroine's desire for an affair with the son of a Louisiana resort owner, whom she meets on vacation. The power of sensuality, the delusion of ecstatic love, and the solitude that accompanies the trappings of middle- and upper-class life are the... (more)

Life in the iron mills, and other stories

Life in the iron mills, and other stories

by Rebecca Harding Davis

You must read this book and let your heart be broken- New York Times Book Review "One of the earliest recognitions in American literature of the existence of the very poor."-Michele Murray, National Observer Suggested for course use in: 19th-century U.S. literature Working-class studies Rebecca Harding Davis (1831-1910) published 12 books and many serialized novels, stories, and essays.

The Crucible

by Arthur Miller

Based on historical people and real events, Arthur Miller's play uses the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence unleashed by the rumors of witchcraft as a powerful parable about McCarthyism. Introduction by Christopher Bigsby

The Coquette

by Hannah Webster Foster

The Coquette tells the much-publicized story of the seduction and death of Elizabeth Whitman, a poet from Hartford, Connecticut. Written as a series of letters - between the heroine and her friends and lovers - it describes her long, tortuous courtship by two men, neither of whom perfectly suits her. Eliza Wharton (as Whitman is called in the novel) wavers between Major Sanford, a charming but insincere man, and... (more)

Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems

Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

A new, wide-ranging selection of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s most influential writings, this edition captures the essence of American Transcendentalism and illustrates the breadth of one of America’s greatest philosophers and poets. The writings featured here show Emerson as a protester against social conformity, a lover of nature, an activist for the rights of women and slaves, and a poet of great sensitivity. As... (more)

The Fall of the House of Usher

by Edgar Allan Poe

Uncle Tom's Cabin (A Norton Critical Edition)

Uncle Tom's Cabin (A Norton Critical Edition)

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

In the nineteenth century Uncle Tom's Cabin sold more copies than any other book in the world except the Bible. It was quickly translated into thirty-seven languages and has never gone out of print. The book had a far-reaching impact and deeply affected the national conscience of antebellum America. The Norton Critical Edition text is that of the 1852 book edition, published in two volumes by John P. Jewett... (more)

The Great Meadow (Southern Classics Series)

The Great Meadow (Southern Classics Series)

by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

Elizabeth Madox Roberts sets "The Great Meadow" at the time of the western migration from Piedmont Virginia to her native Kentucky. The novel recounts the heroism of the Kentucky pioneer--not far removed from Roberts's own time and experience--particularly through the life of her resilient heroine, Diony Hall. "The Great Meadow" is a classic of our literature.

Salome of the Tenements (Radical Novel Reconsidered)

Salome of the Tenements (Radical Novel Reconsidered)

by Anzia Yezierska

A gritty portrait of life on the Lower East Side of New York City in the early 1900s. Sonya Vrunsky is poor but smart and when she is sent to interview a wealthy philanthropist, she decides she will marry him. Sonya wins her millionaire, but their differences threaten the marriage.

Wieland

by Charles Brockden Brown

"A light proceeding from the edifice made every part of the scene visible. A gleam diffused itself over the intermediate space, and instantly a loud report, like the explosion of a mine, followed. She uttered an involuntary shriek, but the new sounds that greeted her ear, quickly conquered her surprise. They were piercing shrieks, and uttered without intermission. The gleams which had diffused themselves far and... (more)

Our Nig: or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black

Our Nig: or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black

by Harriet E. Wilson

Our Nig is a classic of African American Literature that has proven to be an enduring contribution to our understanding of free blacks in the nineteenth century. Originally published in 1859, it was neglected for over a hundred years and is now the subject of renewed scholarly interest. A fascinating fusion of two literary modes of the nineteenth century—the sentimental novel and the slave narrative— Our Nig ... (more)

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Published by MobileReference (mobi).

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Published by MobileReference (mobi).

by Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

Seven thought-provoking stories employ charm and humor to examine relations between the sexes from a feminist perspective. In addition to the title story, an 1892 classic that recounts a woman’s descent into madness, this collection includes "Cottagette," "Turned," "Mr. Peebles’ Heart," and more.

Four Quartets

by Ted Hughes, T. S. Eliot

The last major verse written by the Nobel laureate, including “Burnt Norton,” “East Coker,” “The Dry Salvages,” and “Little Gidding.”

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Tags: american lit (classics)

by Mark Twain

by Mark Twain

by William Dean Howells

by John Dos Passos

by Maria S. Cummins

by William Faulkner

by Lillian Eugenia Smith

by Kate Chopin

by Rebecca Harding Davis

by Arthur Miller

by Hannah Webster Foster

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

by Edgar Allan Poe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

by Anzia Yezierska

by Charles Brockden Brown

by Harriet E. Wilson

by Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

by Ted Hughes, T. S. Eliot