The Library of America

The last of the Valerii.--The real thing.--The lesson of the master.--Daisy Miller.

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.

An American frigate and her supporting schooner enter a shoal-filled bay off Northumberland (northeastern England) on a bleak day in December during the American Revolution. Their immediate purpose is to pick up from the rocky cliffs someone referred to at first simply as a pilot. There is a suggestion that he may be a very special pilot when Captain Munson, commander of the frigate, orders his first officer, Lieutenant Edward Griffith, to stand offshore in the ship's barge, filled with marines, while Lieutenant Richard Barnstable, commander of the schooner Ariel, goes ashore in a whaleboat with a handful of men to bring off the stranger.

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

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.

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 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.

In a lifetime of exploration, writing, and passionate political activism, John Muir made himself America's most eloquent spokesman for the mystery and majesty of the wilderness. A crucial figure in the creation of our national parks system and a visionary prophet of environmental awareness, he was also a master of natural description who evoked with unique power and intimacy the untrammeled landscapes of the American West. This book collects his most significant and best-loved works in a single volume.

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.

This second volume in The Library of America's authoritative edition of John Steinbeck features his acknowledged masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath. Written in an incredibly compressed five-month period, the novel had an electrifying impact upon publication in 1939, unleashing a political storm with its vision of America's dispossessed struggling for survival. It continues to exert a powerful influence on American culture, and has inspired artists as diverse as John Ford, Woody Guthrie, and Bruce Springsteen. Tracing the journey of the Joad family from the dust bowl of Oklahoma to the migrant camps of California, Steinbeck creates an American epic, spacious, impassioned, and pulsating with the rhythms of living speech. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize and has since sold millions of copies worldwide. . The text of The Grapes of Wrath has been newly edited based on Steinbeck's manuscript, typescript, and proofs. Many errors have been corrected and words omitted or misconstrued by his typist have been restored. In addition, The Harvest Gypsies, his 1936 investigative report on migrant workers which laid the groundwork for the novel, is included as an appendix. The Long Valley (1938) displays Steinbeck's brilliance as a writer of short stories, including such classics as "The Chrysanthemums," "The White Quail," "Flight," and "The Red Pony." Set in the Salinas Valley landscape which was Steinbeck's enduring inspiration, the stories explore moments of fear, tenderness, isolation, and violence with poetic intensity. The Log from the Sea of Cortez, an account of the 1940 marine biological expedition in which Steinbeck participated with his close friend Ed Ricketts, is a unique blend of science, philosophy, and adventure, as well as one of Steinbeck's most revealing expositions of his core beliefs. First published in 1941 as part of the collaborative volume Sea of Cortez, Steinbeck's narrative was reissued separately a decade later, augmented by the moving tribute "About Ed Ricketts."

This adventurous volume, with its companion devoted to the 1930s and 40s, presents a rich vein of modern American writing too often neglected in mainstream literary histories. Evolving out of the terse and violent hardboiled style of the pulp magazines, noir fiction expanded over the decades into a varied and innovative body of writing. Tapping deep roots in the American literary imagination, the novels in this volume explore themes of crime, guilt, deception, obsessive passion, murder, and the disintegrating psyche. With visionary and often subversive force, they create a dark and violent mythology out of the most commonplace elements of modern life. The raw power of their vernacular style has profoundly influenced contemporary American culture and writing. Far from formulaic, they are ambitious works which bend the rules of genre fiction to their often experimental purposes.

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.

Contains: All My Sons [Crucible]( [Death of a Salesman]( Enemy of the People Man Who Had All the Luck Memory of Two Mondays Misfits View from the Bridge

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

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

A collection of London's stories about dogs.

"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.

"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.

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."

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.

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.

"This Library of America volume supplements the classic pieces from Agee on Film with previously uncollected writings on Ingrid Bergman, the Marx Brothers, Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat, Vittorio De Sica's Shoeshine, and a wealth of other cinematic subjects." "Agee's own work as a screenwriter is represented by his script for Charles Laughton's unique and haunting masterpiece of Southern gothic, The Night of the Hunter, adapted from the novel by Davis Grubb. This collection also includes examples of Agee's masterfully probing reporting for Fortune - on subjects as diverse as the Tennessee Valley Authority, commercial orchids, and cockfighting - and a sampling of literary reviews, among them appreciations of William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, S.J. Perelman, and William Carlos Williams."--Jacket.

Blithedale Romance Fanshawe House of Seven Gables Marble Faun Scarlet Letter

Examines the role of religion in human lives, the nature of the universe, truth, pragmatism, war, politics, and metaphysics.