The Library of America

Iron Heel John Barleycorn [Martin Eden]( People of the Abyss Road

Contains: Backward glance. [Ethan Frome]( Madame de Treymes. Mother's recompense. Old New York. Summer.

Contains: Spring Storm Not About Nightingales Battle of Angels I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix From 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1946) 27 Wagons Full of Cotton The Lady of Larkspur Lotion The Last of My Solid Gold Watches Portrait of a Madonna Auto-da-Fé Lord Byron’s Love Letter This Property Is Condemned [Glass Menagerie]( [Streetcar Named Desire]( Summer and Smoke The Rose Tattoo Camino Real From 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1953) “Something Wild” Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen Something Unspoken Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

"Passionate, insightful, often funny, and exhibiting a linguistic richness few writers have equaled, the novels of Saul Bellow are among the defining achievements of postwar American literature. Novels 1956 1964 opens with Seize the Day, a tightly wrought novella that, unfolding over the course of a single devastating day, explores the desperate predicament of the failed actor and salesman Tommy Wilhelm. The austere psychological portraiture of Seize the Day is followed by an altogether different book, Henderson the Rain King, the ebullient tale of the irresistible eccentric Eugene Henderson, best characterized by his primal mantra "I want! I want!" Beneath the novel's comic surface lies an affecting parable of one man's quest to know himself and come to terms with morality; like Don Quixote, Henderson is, as Bellow later described him, "an absurd seeker of high qualities."" "Henderson's irrepressible vitality is matched by that of Moses Herzog, the eponymous hero of Bellow's best-selling 1964 novel. His wife having abandoned him for his best friend, Herzog is on the verge of mental collapse and has embarked on a furious letter-writing campaign as an outlet for his all-consuming rage. Bellow's bravura performance in Herzog launched a new phase of his career, as literary acclaim was now joined by a receptive mass audience in America."--Jacket.

The third volume of the Library of America's edition of Saul Bellow's complete novels collects three essential works: Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970), Humboldt's Gift (1975) -- and The Dean's December (1982). In each, Bellow shows himself a master of biting social commentary and bold characterization--above all through a trio of unforgettable protagonists. These novels, written in the period of Bellow's greatest literary and popular acclaim--he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976--are unsparing yet humane, and range widely in their philosophical and cultural concerns. They offer the indispensable voice of a great American raconteur and thinker. In Mr. Sammler's Planet, the anarchic forces of late-1960s America are set loose on Artur Sammler, a highly cultured septuagenarian and European émigré who seeks "with God, to be free from the bondage of the ordinary and the finite." A Holocaust survivor living out his latter days in Manhattan, Sammler endures the city's everyday barbarism, as shocking as it is casual, and must contend with absurd complications when a manuscript goes missing. Written shortly before the first moon landing, the novel's dark speculations, filtered through Sammler's urbane intelligence, are cosmic in scope. Humboldt's Gift depicts the deep and troubled friendship between the tormented poet Von Humboldt Fleisher and the renowned writer Charlie Citrine. Humboldt has died in squalid obscurity, but for Citrine the memory of their earlier days persists as counterpoint to a middle age studded with difficulties: a messy divorce, a demanding mistress, and the attentions of a Chicago hoodlum who claims that Charlie has cheated him. Writing of the book's "rich and suggestive" narrative voice, Sven Birkerts observes, "There is a feeling when reading this novel that a tightly rolled sultan's carpet has splashed open before our eyes." In The Dean's December, Albert Corde experiences totalitarianism firsthand when he travels to Bucharest to visit his dying mother-in-law. As college dean in Chicago he has attracted controversy through his journalism and his role in a racially charged murder trial. Alternating between Romanian and American settings, the novel is a profound indictment of official hypocrisy and corruption on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

A writer of great urbanity and poise, Washington Irving was America's first internationally acclaimed man of letters. Here in one volume are the writings that established his reputation and earned him the admiration of Hawthorne, Poe, Coleridge, Byron, Scott, and Dickens. Written in the character of an elderly gentleman of the old school, "Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent." is a series of comic reports on the theater, theater-goers, fashions, balls, courtships, duels, and marriages of his contemporary New York. "Salmagundi" continues this roguish style of satire and burlesque, and its freshness, energy, and accomplishment took the Anglo-American literary scene by storm. "A History of New York," a wild and hilarious spoof combining real New York history with political satire, is presented here in its original, unexpurgated version. "The Sketch Book" is a brilliant, captivating story collection that draws on vanishing folkways, depictions of Hudson Valley life, and fable; it contains Irving's best-loved stories, "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."

The library of America is dedicated to publishing America's best and most significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes, featuring authoritative texts. Hailed as the "finest-looking, longest-lasting editions ever made" (The New Republic), Library of America volumes make a fine gift for any occasion. Now, with exactly one hundred volumes to choose from, there is a perfect gift for everyone

The gilded age The American claimant Tom Sawyer abroad Tom Sawyer, detective No. 44, the mysterious stranger

This collection of Poe's writings includes his thoughts on poetry; reviews he wrote on many other authors, British, American, and Continental; his views of the literary world he moved in; essays, etc. A valuable tool for anyone studying Poe and his work.

The library of America is dedicated to publishing America's best and most significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes, featuring authoritative texts. Hailed as the "finest-looking, longest-lasting editions ever made" (The New Republic), Library of America volumes make a fine gift for any occasion. Now, with exactly one hundred volumes to choose from, there is a perfect gift for everyone.

Reburn is the story that relates a young man's initiation into the sailors life; White-Jacket is the story that is a semi-autobiographical account of experiences in the U.S. Navy; Moby-Dick, or the whale is the most famous of Melville's works, and tells the story of Ahab, a ship captain that has become obessed with the hunt for the whale he has named Moby-Dick.

"In the stories and novellas he wrote for Black Mask and other pulp magazines in the 1920s and 1930s, Dashiell Hammett took the detective story and turned in into a medium for capturing the jarring textures and revved-up cadences of modern American life. In this volume, The Library of America collects the finest of these stories: 24 in all, along with some revealing essays and an earlier version of his novel The Thin Man."--BOOK JACKET.

Vol. 46.

Contains Emerson's published poetry, plus selections of his unpublished poetry from journals and notebooks, and some of his translations of poetry from other languages, notably Dante's La vita nuova.

"Here, in the most comprehensive collection of George S. Kaufman's plays ever assembled, are nine classics: his "backstage" play The Royal Family (1927, written with Edna Ferber); the Marx Brothers-inspired mayhem of Animal Crackers (1928, with Morrie Ryskind), in a version discovered in Groucho Marx's papers and published here for the first time; June Moon (1929, with Ring Lardner), a hilarious look at a young composer trying to make it big on Tin Pan Alley; Once in a Lifetime (1930, with Moss Hart), one of the first and best satires of Hollywood; Pulitzer Prize winners Of Thee I Sing (1931, with Morrie Ryskind and Ira Gershwin) and You Can't Take It With You (1936, with Moss Hart); Dinner at Eight (1932, with Edna Ferber), a tart ensemble piece that mixes comedy and melodrama; Stage Door (1936, with Edna Ferber), his much-loved story about young actresses trying to make it big in New York City; and The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939, with Moss Hart), an unforgettable burlesque of America's cult of celebrity."--BOOK JACKET.

Here, in one authoritative Library of America volume, are all three of the beloved ''Little Woman'' books as Louisa May Alcott wrote them, with original engravings.

In his brief career -- he died at 32 -- Frank Norris introduced fresh and sometimes shocking elements into American fiction. Inspired by the naturalistic "new novel" developed in France by Zola and Flaubert, he adapted it to American settings, adding his own taste for exciting action and a fascination with the emerging sciences of economics and psychology. Vandover and the brute, set in a vividly described San Francisco, captures with harsh realism the dissipation and decline of a fashionable playboy into virtual bestiality. McTeague (source for Erich von Stroheim's classic film Greed) was a radical departure for its time in its frank treatment of sex, domestic violence and pathological obsession, revealing the dark underside of San Francisco's new middle class. The octopus depicts the epic struggle of strong, ruthless California ranchers with the railroad monopoly and its political machine. Twenty-two essays address theories of literature, the state of American fiction, and the social responsibilities of the artist. The New York Times said, "An opportunity to read, or re-read, in an authentic new edition, the work of one of the trailblazers in American literature.

These novels record the emergence of John Dos Passos as a chronicler of the upheavals of the early 20th century. "In One Man's Initiation:" 1917 an idealistic young American serving as a volunteer ambulance driver in France learns of the fear, uncertainty, and camaraderie of war. "Three Soldiers" engages in a deeper exploration of the impact of World War I upon an increasingly fractured civilization. The novel depicts the experiences of three Americans as they fight in the final battles of the war and then confront a world in which peace offers little respite from the dehumanizing servility and regimentation of militarized life. "Manhattan Transfer" is a kaleidoscopic portrait of New York City in the first two decades of the 20th century that follows the changing fortunes of more than a dozen characters as they strive to make sense out of the chaos of modern urban existence.

The years 1942 to 1954 saw William Faulkner's rise to literary celebrity - sought after by Hollywood, lionized by the critics, awarded a Nobel Prize in 1950 and the Pulitzer and National Book Award for 1954. But despite his success, he was plagued by depression and alcohol and haunted by a sense that he had more to achieve - and a finite amount of time and energy to achieve it. This volume - the third in The Library of America's new, authoritative edition of Faulkner's complete works - collects the novels written during this crucial and fascinating period in his career. The newly restored texts, based on Faulkner's manuscripts, typescripts, and proof sheets, are free of the changes introduced by the original editors and are faithful to the author's intentions. In the four works included here, Faulkner delved deeper into themes of race and religion, and furthered his experiments with fictional structure and narrative voice; defying the odds, he continued to break new ground in American fiction. Go Down, Moses (1942) is a haunting novel made up of seven related stories that explore the intertwined lives of black, white, and Indian inhabitants of Yoknapatawpha County. It includes "The Bear," one of the most famous works in all American fiction, with its evocation of "the wilderness, the big woods, bigger and older than any recorded document.". Characters from Go Down, Moses reappear in Intruder in the Dust (1948). Part detective novel, part morality tale, it is a compassionate story of a black man on trial and the growing moral awareness of a southern white boy. Requiem for a Nun (1951) is a sequel to Sanctuary. With an unusual structure combining novel and play, it tells the fate of the passionate, haunted Temple Drake and the murder case through which she achieves a tortured redemption. Prose interludes condense millennia of local history into a swirling counterpoint. In A Fable (1954), Faulkner's recasting of the Christ story set during World War I, he wanted, he said, "to try to tell what I had found in my lifetime of truth in some important way before I had to put the pen down and die." The novel, which earned a Pulitzer Prize, is both an anguished spiritual parable and a drama of mutiny, betrayal, and violence in the barracks and on the battlefields.

This is the most comprehensive volume of Walt Whitman (1819-1892) ever published. It includes all of his poetry and what he considered his complete prose. This is also the only collection that includes, in exactly the form in which it appeared in 1855, the first edition of Leaves of Grass. This was the book, a commercial failure, that prompted Emerson's famous message to Whitman: "I greet you at the beginning of a great career". These twelve poems, including what were later to be entitled "Song of Myself" and "I Sing the Body Electric", and a preface announcing the author's poetic theories, were the first stage of a massive, lifelong work. Six editions and some thirty-seven years later Leaves of Grass had become one of the central volumes in the history of world poetry. Each edition involved revisions of earlier poems and the incorporation of new ones. In 1856, for example, he added such poems as "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" and "Spontaneous Me"; in the third edition (1860) "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" and two new sections, "Calamus" and "Children of Adam". In the fourth (1867) he incorporated the Civil War poems published a few years earlier as Drum-Taps and Sequel to Drum-Taps, including the poems on the death of Lincoln, notably "When Lilacs Last in the Door Yard Bloom'd." And so it went, a triumphant progress, hailed by Emerson, Thoreau, Rossetti and others, but also, as with the sixth edition in 1881-82, beset by charges of obscenity for such poems as "A Woman Waits for Me." Printed here is the final, the great culminating edition of 1891-92, the last supervised by Whitman himself just before his death. Whitman's prose is no less extraordinary. Specimen Days and Collect (1882) includes reminiscences of nineteenth-century New York City that will fascinate readers in the twentieth, notes on the Civil War, especially his service in Washington hospitals, and trenchant comments on books and authors. Democratic Vistas (1871), in its attacks on the misuses of national wealth after the Civil War, is relevant to conditions in our own time, and November Boughs (1888) brings together retrospective prefaces, opinions, random autobiographical bits that are in effect an extended epilogue on Whitman's life, works, and times. Here it all is, the complete Whitman-elegiac, comic, furtive, outrageous-the most innovative and original of American authors.

Tells the stories of a mourning family remembering its past, a vicious gangster, a young pregnant woman searching for her child's father, and barnstorming pilots at an air show.

No American writer of the 19th century was more universally enjoyed and admired than Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. His works were extraordinary bestsellers for their era, achieving fame both here and abroad. Now, for the first time in over 25 years, Poems and Other Writings offers a full-scale literary portrait of America's greatest popular poet. Here are the poems that created an American mythology: Evangeline in the Forest Primeval, Hiawatha by the Shores of Gitchee Gumee, The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, The Wreck of the Hesperus, The Village Blacksmith Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree, The Strange Courtship of Miles Standish, The maiden Priscilla and the hesitant John Alden; and verses, like: A Psalm of Life and The Children's Hour, whose phrases and characters have become part of the culture. Erudite and fluent in many languages, Longfellow was endlessly fascinated with the byways of history and the curiosities of legend. His many poems on literary themes, such as his moving homages to Dante and Chaucer, his verse translations from Lope de Vega, Heinrich Heine, and Michelangelo, and his ambitious verse dramas, notably The New England Tragedies (also complete), are remarkable in their range and ambition. As a special feature, this volume restores to print Longfellow's novel Kavanagh, a study of small-town life and literary ambition that was praised by Emerson as an important contribution to the development of American fiction. A selection of essays rounds out of the volume and provides testimony to Longfellow's concern with creating an American national literature.

Letters from London, 1757-1775, Paris, 1776-1785, Philadelphia, 1785-1790, Poor Richard's almanack, 1733-1758, The autobiography

Contains: [Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]( Adventures of Tom Sawyer Life on the Mississippi Pudd'nhead Wilson

Collects James's travel writings, describing France, Italy, Switzerland, and Holland.

A collection of London's stories about dogs.

From A. Philip Randolph's defiant call in 1941 for African Americans to march on Washington to Alice Walker in 1973, Reporting civil rights presents firsthand accounts of the revolutionary events that overthrew segregation in the United States. This two-volume anthology brings together for the first time nearly 200 newspaper and magazine reports and book excerpts, and features 151 writers, including James Baldwin, Robert Penn Warren, David Halberstam, Lillian Smith, Gordon Parks, Murray Kempton, Ted Poston, Claude Sitton, and Anne Moody. A newly researched chronology of the movement, a 32-page insert of rare journalist photographs, and original biographical profiles are included in each volume.

A two-volume set that contains more than 270 speeches, sketches, short stories, maxims, and other writings by Mark Twain.

"These three early novels are stirring romances of the South Seas; many of these fictional details resemble some of the events in Melville's own life in the early 1840s"--Jacket.

Henry David Thoreau wrote four full-length works, collected here in a single volume. Interweaving natural observation, personal experience, and historical lore, they reveal his brilliance not only as a writer, but as a naturalist, scholar, historian, poet, and philosopher. "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" is based on a boat trip taken with his brother from Concord, Massachusetts to Concord, New Hampshire. "Walden" is at once a personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, manual of self-reliance, and masterpiece of style. "The Maine Woods" and "Cape Cod" portray landscapes changing irreversibly even as he wrote. The first combines close observation of the unexplored Maine wilderness with a far-sighted plea for conservation; the second is a brilliant and unsentimental account of survival on a barren peninsula in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay.

This work is a collection of speeches and other writings of Abraham Lincoln, ranging from finely honed legal arguments to dry and sometimes savage humor, to private correspondence and political rhetoric.

"John Dos Passos traveled widely in Europe, the Middle East, Mexico, and the United States, witnessing many of the tumultuous political, social, and cultural events of the early 20th century and recording his changing response to them. This volume collects the vibrant and insightful travel books and essays he wrote at the same time he was publishing his fictional masterpieces Three Soldiers, Manhattan Transfer, and U.S.A." "Rosinante to the Road Again (1922) is a vivid collection of essays on Spanish life, literature, and art that demonstrates Dos Passos' enduring fascination with a country he would repeatedly visit and write about. Orient Express (1927) records his 1921-22 journey through the Middle East, and contains provocative and haunting descriptions of the effects of the Greek-Turkish War; the Caucasus in the aftermath of Soviet conquest; Persia during the rise of Reza Khan; the creation of Iraq by the British; and a winter trip by camel caravan across the desert from Baghdad to Damascus. In All Countries (1934) collects pieces on Russia in the late 1920s, Mexico in the aftermath of Zapata, the troubled Spanish Republic, and strikes and protests in the United States, while articles that appeared in Journeys Between Wars (1938) examine the Popular Front in France and the Spanish Civil War." "Also included are A Pushcart at the Curb (1922), a cycle of poems inspired by his travels; nine political and literary essays written between 1916 and 1941, including his denunciation of the execution of his friend Jose Robles by Spanish Communists; and a selection of letters and diary entries from 1916 to 1920 that record his wartime service as an ambulance driver in France and Italy."--Jacket.

Stories and Early Novels includes every story that Chandler did not later incorporate into a novel - thirteen in all. Drawn from the pages of Black Mask and Dime Detective, these stories show how Chandler adapted the violent conventions of the pulp magazines - with their brisk exposition and rapid-fire dialogue - to his own emerging vision of 20th-century America. Raymond Chandler: Stories and Early Novels contains a newly researched chronology of Chandler's life, explanatory notes, and an essay on the texts.

Four novels set in the 1930's explore the tragic and comic aspects of the South.

Read throughout the world, admired by Dostoyevsky and translated by Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe has become a legendary figure, representing the artist as obsessed outcast and romantic failure. His nightmarish visions, shaped by cool artistic calculation, reveal some of the dark possibilities of human experience. His enormous popularity and his continuing influence of literature depend less on legend or vision than on his stylistic and formal accomplishments as a writer of fiction and a great lyric poet. In this complete and uniquely authoritative Library of America collection, well-known tales of “mystery and imagination” and his best-known verse are collected with early poems, rarely published stories and humorous sketches, and the ecstatic prose poem Eureka. But his enormous popularity and his continuing influence on literature depend less on legend or vision than on his stylistic and formal accomplishments as a writer of fiction and as a great lyric poet (“always for all lands,” as Yeats said), famous for the sensuous musicality of “To Helen,” “The City in the Sea,” and “Annabel Lee” and for the hypnotic, incantatory rhythms of “The Raven” and “Ulalume.” “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Cask of Amontillado” show Poe’s mastery of Gothic horror; his “The Pit and the Pendulum” is a classic of terror and suspense. He invented the modern detective story, as in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and developed the form of science fiction that was to influence, among others, Jules Verne and Thomas Pynchon. Poe was also adept at the humorous sketch of playful jeu d’esprit, such as “X-ing a Paragraph” or “Never Bet the Devil Your Head.” All his stories reveal his high regard for technical proficiency and for what he called “ratiocination.” Poe’s fugitive early poems, stories rarely collected (such as “Bon-Bon,” “King Pest,” “Mystification,” and "The Duc De L’Omelette), his only attempt at drama, "Politian"—these and much more are included in this comprehensive collection, presented chronologically to show Poe’s development as a writer, his oeuvre culminates in his vision of an indeterminate universe, Eureka: A Prose Poem, his culminating vision of an indeterminate universe, printed here for the first time as Poe revised it and intended it should stand. A special feature of this volume is the care taken to select an authoritative text of each work. The printing and publishing history of every item has been investigated in order to choose a version that incorporates all of Poe’s own revisions without reproducing the errors or changes introduced by later editors. Here, then, is one of America’s and the world’s most disturbing, powerful, and inventive writers published in “the first truly dependable collection of Poe’s poetry and tales.” --jacket

A reader's edition of key writings by the acclaimed author includes the National Book Award-winning "Goodbye, Columbus" and the trenchant psychological portrait, "Letting Go."

Contains: Pierre, or the ambiguities -- Israel Potter, his fifty years of exile -- [The Piazza Tales]( - The Piazza - [Bartleby, the Scrivener]( - Benito Cereno - The Lightning-Rod Man - The Encantadas; or, Enchanted Islands - The Bell-Tower The confidence-man, his masquerade -- Uncollected prose -- [Billy Budd](

The library of America is dedicated to publishing America's best and most significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes, featuring authoritative texts. Hailed as the "finest-looking, longest-lasting editions ever made" (The New Republic), Library of America volumes make a fine gift for any occasion. Now, with exactly one hundred volumes to choose from there is a perfect gift for everyone.

Contains the last two parts of Adams' work [History of the United States during the administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, namely] History of the United States of America during the first administration of James Madison, and History of the United States of America during the second administration of James Madison.--Notes on the texts, p. 1428.

This volume is an anthology of short stories and poetry written by American author Willa Cather (1873-1947). She achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. This book includes the short-story collections "Youth and the Bright Medusa," "Obscure Destinies," and "The Old Beauty and Others," the novellas "Alexander's Bridge" and "My Mortal Enemy," occasional pieces, critical essays, and Cather's only book of poetry.

Presents four extraordinarily diverse works displaying the range and originality of Roth's work.

Here, based on extensive research into his manuscripts and published work, is the first authoritative and truly comprehensive collection of his writings. Eagerly awaited by scholars and general readers alike, it brings together in a single volume all the major poetry, a generous selection of uncollected poems, all of Frost's dramatic writing, and the most extensive gathering of his prose writings ever published. The core of this collection is the 1949 Complete Poems of Robert Frost, the last edition supervised by the poet himself. This version of the poems is free of the unauthorized editorial changes introduced into subsequent editions. Also included is In The Clearing (1962), Frost's final volume of poetry. Verse drawn from letters, articles, pamphlets, and journals makes up the largest selection of uncollected poems ever assembled, including nearly two dozen beautiful early works printed here for the first time. Also gathered are all the dramatic works: three plays and two verse masques. . The unprecedented prose section includes more than three times as many items as any other collection available. It is rich and diverse, presenting many newly discovered or rediscovered pieces. Especially unusual items include Frost's written contribution for John F. Kennedy's inauguration and two fascinating 1959 essays on "The Future of Man." Several manuscript items are published here for the first time, including the essays "'Caveat Poeta'" and "The Way There," Frost's remarks on being appointed poetry consultant to the Library of Congress in 1958, the preface to a proposed new edition of North of Boston, and many others. A selection of letters represents all of Frost's important comments about prosody, poetics, style, and his theory of "sentence sounds."

Contains: - Adventures of Tom Sawyer - [Adventures of Huckleberry Finn] ( - The Prince and the Pauper

Although Gertrude Stein, as much as James Joyce, is often considered the most famous and influential of modern experimental writers of prose and poetry, few realize the breadth and depth of her contribution to theater and opera, which hardly stops with the justly famous collaboration with Virgil Thomson, "Four Saints in Three Acts." She considered Operas and Plays to be her definitive statement, as of 1932, for the stage. Born in 1874 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, raised in Oakland, California, she lived in France from 1903 till her death in 1946.

Selection of writings by philosopher, psychologist, and champion of religious pluralism William James, including "The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy," "Psychology: Briefer Course," and ten other essays.