American Novels

Showing 1–24 of 34 results

  • Fanny Fern: Selected Writings

    Fanny Fern dominated the New York literary scene in the 1850s, garnering both esteem and, occasionally, derision for her witty and acerbic newspaper columns and…

  • Moby-Dick; or, the Whale: Selections

    When Melville completed Moby-Dick, he wrote to Nathaniel Hawthorne that “I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as a lamb.” While it took…

  • The Great Gatsby – Second Edition

    The Great Gatsby is widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of American fiction. It tells of the mysterious Jay Gatsby’s grand effort to win…

  • Ida May

    The sentimental antislavery novel Ida May appeared so like its predecessor in the genre, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, that for the month of November 1854, reviewers…

  • Pudd’nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins

    The two narratives published together in The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson and the Comedy Those Extraordinary Twins are overflowing with spectacular events. Twain shows us…

  • Kelroy

    Kelroy, a nearly-forgotten 1812 novel by Rebecca Rush, combines the refinement of the novel of manners with the Gothic novel’s hidden evil to tell the…

  • Vandover and the Brute

    Written circa 1894-95 but published posthumously in 1914, Frank Norris’s Vandover and the Brute presents an unflinching portrait of unconventional sexuality, moral dissolution, and physical…

  • The Blithedale Romance

    Inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s own experience as a member of the famous Brook Farm Community, which the author describes in his preface as the “most…

  • The Red Badge of Courage

    The story of a young soldier, Henry Fleming, who flees a Civil War battle, The Red Badge of Courage has been celebrated for its depiction…

  • Ethan Frome

    This amply annotated edition of Wharton’s 1911 classic novella includes textual notes and documents, including Wharton's preface, letters, reviews, and early short story, “Mrs. Manstey’s…

  • Emma Corbett

    Set both in England and in America, Emma Corbett is the moving story of a family torn apart by the American revolutionary war. Edward Corbett…

  • Clarence

    Honorable mention recipient for the 2012 Society for the Study of American Women Writers Award. A pioneering American novel of manners first published in 1830,…

  • Cover image for The Coquette and The Boarding School. A young woman looking bored, reclined on a couch.

    The Coquette and The Boarding School

    Hannah Webster Foster based The Coquette on the true story of Elizabeth Whitman, an unmarried woman who died in childbirth in New England. Fictionalizing Whitman’s…

  • The Awakening and Other Writings

    Critically acclaimed as Kate Chopin’s most influential work of fiction, The Awakening has assumed a place in the American literary canon. This new edition places…

  • Bertram Cope’s Year

    In 1918, when Henry Blake Fuller was 62 years old, he completed the manuscript of a novel, Bertram Cope’s Year. Though Fuller was well known…

  • The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

    Edgar Allan Poe’s only long fiction has provoked intense scholarly discussions about its meaning since its first publication. The novel relates the adventures of Pym…

  • An Imperative Duty

    An Imperative Duty tells the story of Rhoda Aldgate, a young woman on the verge of marriage who has been raised by her aunt to…

  • The Country of the Pointed Firs

    A sharply observed, affectionate, and unsentimental portrait of life in a Maine fishing village, The Country of the Pointed Firs is Sarah Orne Jewett’s most…

  • The Call of the Wild

    A best-seller from its first publication in 1903, The Call of the Wild tells the story of Buck, a big mongrel dog who is shipped…

  • Uncle Tom’s Cabin

    With its gripping plot and pungent dialogue, Uncle Tom’s Cabin offers readers today a passionate portrait of a nation on the verge of disunion and…

  • Reuben and Rachel

    Susanna Haswell Rowson, a popular and prolific writer, actress, and educator in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, had a truly transatlantic life and…

  • Ramona

    Ramona has often been compared to Uncle Tom’s Cabin for its influence on American social policy, and this is the only edition available that presents…

  • Secret History; or, The Horrors of St. Domingo and Laura

    Based on Leonora Sansay’s eyewitness accounts of the final days of French rule in Saint Domingue (Haiti), Secret History is a vivid account of race…

  • Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

    First published in 1893, when Stephen Crane was only twenty-one years old, Maggie is the harrowing tale of a young woman’s fall into prostitution and…