John D. Seelye

"Jane Eyre's American Daughters is about the influence of Charlotte Bronte's romance on North American writers, including Susan Warner, Louisa May Alcott, Martha Finley, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Jean Webster, Eleanor Porter, and L.M. Montgomery. John Seelye demonstrates that the reception of Bronte's Gothic romance in America was filtered through Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of the author, published shortly after her friend's death in 1855. A sentimental classic in its day, Gaskell's book promoted an image of Charlotte as a long-suffering creative genius with high moral standards. Her biography necessarily overlooked Bronte's obsessive love for her Belgian professor, Constantin Heger, an older and married man. Though Heger did not return Charlotte's affection, he was the model for the lovers in Bronte's novels, including the passionate, adulterous Edward Rochester, who inspired censorious reviews questioning the moral character of the author when Jane Eyre was published in 1847, a reputation that Gaskell's biography successfully countered."--Jacket.

Collection contains: Bret Harte: Muck-a-muck -- Right eye of the commander -- Luck of roaring camp -- Outcasts of Poker Flat -- Tennessee's partner -- Brown of Calaveras -- Mark Twain: Notorious frog of Calaveras County -- Jim Blaine and his grandfather's ram -- Scotty Briggs and the parson -- What stumped the bluejays (Jim Baker's bluejay yarn) -- Californian's tale -- Ambrose Bierce: Holy terror -- Secret of Macarger's Gulch -- Night-doings at "Deadman's" -- Stranger -- Owen Wister: Specimen Jones -- Serenade at Siskiyou -- Second Missouri compromise -- Sharon's choice -- Frederick Remington: Sergeant of the orphan troop -- Sun-down Leflare's warm spot -- Sun-down's higher self -- When a document is official -- Billy's tearless woe -- Stephen Crane: A man and some others -- Bride comes to Yellow Sky -- Twelve O'clock -- Moonlight on the snow -- Jack London: All gold canyon -- Frank Norris: Passing of Cock-eye Blacklock -- Two hearts that beat as one -- Stewart Edward White: Girl who got rattled -- Prospector -- Ole Virginia -- Corner in horses -- Two-man gun -- O. Henry: Ransom of Mack -- Call loan -- Princess and the puma -- Passing of Black Eagle -- Departmental case -- Last of the troubadours -- Mary Austin: The land -- Case of conscience -- Ploughed lands -- Return of Mr. Wills -- The Fakir -- Readjustment -- House of Offence -- Walking woman.

Long celebrated as a symbol of the country's origins, Plymouth Rock no longer receives much national attention. In fact, historians now generally agree that the Pilgrims' storied landing on the Rock never actually took place - the tradition having emerged more than a century after the arrival of the Mayflower. In Memory's Nation, however, John Seelye is not interested in the factual truth of the landing. He argues that what truly gives Plymouth Rock its significance is more than two centuries of oratorical, literary, and artistic celebrations of the Pilgrims' arrival. Drawing on a wealth of speeches, paintings, and popular illustrations, Seelye demonstrates how Plymouth Rock changed in meaning over the years, beginning as a symbol of freedom evoked in patriotic sermons at the start of the Revolution and eventually becoming a symbol of exclusion during the 1920s. In a concluding chapter, Seelye notes the continuing popularity of Plymouth Rock as a tourist attraction, affirming that, at least in New England, the Pilgrim advent still has meaning. But as he demonstrates throughout the book, the Rock was from the beginning a regional symbol, associated with New England's attempts to assert its importance as the starting point for what became the American Republic.

The second volume in Seelye's series on the rivers of America in the American imagination, Beautiful Machine explores a critical, transitional period in American history, taking as its starting point the French and Indian War -- the event that determined domination of North America by an Anglo-American presence -- and ending with the opening of the Erie Canal -- the event that determined the geopolitical alignment that would guarantee a northeastern hegemony as the new nation moved West. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson figure prominently as visionaries, who saw American rivers as agents of national unity with the promise of linking Virginia's Potomac to the wealth of the Ohio Valley. - Jacket flap.

This is Seelye's revised retelling of the story of Huck Finn. Seelye records the full account of Huck's epic journey the way Huck himself would have told it - unvarnished, unbowdlerized and unexpurgated. The boy's salty humanness, his realistic depiction of sin, sex, slavery, and salvation in the Mississippi Valley of mid-nineteenth-century America, comes through unfiltered by Victorian prudery.

Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, by E. A. Poe. Benito Cereno, by H. Melville. Mocha Dick, by J. N. Reynolds. The encounter; a scene at sea, by W. Leggett.

The adventures of a mischievous young boy and his friends growing up in a Mississippi River town in the nineteenth century.