America's heritage is recorded in classic tales written by its favorite authors. These stories tap the country's many moods and represent every corner of our nation, showing the full range of the American experience.
Best-Loved Short Stories of Nineteenth-Century America brings the nation's past to life in stories that capture the color and temperament of our first full century of independence. These thirty-two masterpieces of literature capture how America worked, relaxed, voted, settled the frontier, and recovered from the Civil War. Read vivid accounts of colonial traditions in tales by Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne; somber treatments of America at war in stories by Ambrose Bierce and Edward Everett Hale; and honest appraisals of controversial race and gender issues in works by Paul Laurence Dunbar, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Kate Chopin. Discover the natural New England of Sarah Orne Jewett, the volatile South of George Washington Cable, the hardscrabble heartland of Hamlin Garland, and the wild West of Bret Harte. Be captivated by the colloquial comedy of Mark Twain, the pathos of Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the drama of Grace King.
Through the nation's most gifted artists, Best-Loved Short Stories of Nineteenth-Century America offers readers the rich and varied cultural legacy that gave rise to a uniquely American literature.
- publisher's synopsis
