The Library of America

A diverse, unprecedented gathering of more than one hundred stories, representing work by fifty different writers. As much a nineteenth-century American invention as the cotton gin and the steamboat, the short story emerged here with a range of innovation and a variety of styles and subjects that has still not been fully appreciated. Diverse, wide-ranging, and unprecedented in its scope, The American Short Story: The Nineteenth Century gathers more than one hundred stories by fifty different writers. This first volume of Library of America''s two-volume collection of nineteenth-century American short fiction tracks the development of the American short story from Charles Brockden Brown''s fragments and Washington Irving''s sketches to Poe''s gothic tales of horror to Mark Twain''s humourous stories. Represented here by generous selections are all the major figures-Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and Twain-as well as Rose Terry Cooke, also a major writer, restored to a place of prominence in this anthology with three unforgettable masterpieces. Among the many unexpected writers in this volume are: William Austin, so crucial to the development of Hawthorne and Poe; the antebellum Black writer and physician James McCune Smith, whose sketches in his ''Heads of the Colored People'' series lampooned the pseudoscientific racism of phrenology; Lucretia Hale, the author of the feminist fantasy ''The Queen of the Red Chessman,'' perhaps the greatest one-hit wonder of the mid-nineteenth century; Francis Parkman, whose early magazine fiction remains unknown today even to many scholars; and Fitz-James O''Brien, the author of such unnerving horror stories as ''The Lost Room'' and ''What Was It?,'' whose true themes and concerns twenty-first century readers, accustomed to reading gay fiction, will not miss. Unrivalled in its range and textual authority, the anthology includes biographies of each writer, a chronology of writers and the American short story from 1800 to 1900, and extensive notes.

A diverse, unprecedented gathering of more than one hundred stories, representing work by fifty different writers. As much a nineteenth-century American invention as the cotton gin and the steamboat, the short story emerged here with a range of innovation and a variety of styles and subjects that has still not been fully appreciated. Diverse, wide-ranging, and unprecedented in its scope, The American Short Story: The Nineteenth Century gathers more than one hundred stories by fifty different writers. This second volume of The Library of America''s two-volume anthology of nineteenth-century American short fiction follows the evolution of American short story from Bret Harte''s mid-century tales of the Gold Rush frontier to Alice Dunbar-Nelson''s ''The Stones of the Village,'' a story about racial passing written around 1900 but not published in the author''s lifetime. Henry James, generously represented in this volume, dominates the second half of the century, though also represeanted here are the accomplishments of the so-called local-colour writers associated with the post-Civil War period. The indelible stories of Sarah Orne Jewett and Kate Chopin are justly celebrated examples of this strain, and those writers are represented by several stories, but ample space is also given here to stories by Constance Fenimore Woolson and Mary Wilkins Freeman. The reader will also discover the short fiction of Stephen Crane, in whose work naturalism finds its perfect aesthetic and philosophical expressionas well as the indispensable stories of such Black writers as Charles W. Chesnutt and Paul Laurence Dunbar. The unexpected selection of Thomas Nelson Page''s ''Marse Chan'' provides the context for Chesnutt''s groundbreaking explorations of racial identity and his use of African American speech and folklore. Other surprises in this volume include Francis Hopkinson Smith''s minor comic masterpiece ''Six House in Squantico,'' about a town left behind in the post-bellum South. Unrivalled in its range and textual authority, the anthology includes biographies of each writer, a chronology of writers and the American short story from 1800 to 1900, and extensive notes.

Based on the original manuscripts, this new annotated edition vividly captures the impact of the nation''s worst conflict on the Northern home front. George Templeton Strong (1820-1875) was perhaps the most trenchant civilian observer of the experience of the Civil War in the North. His diary, alternating between despair and exultation and punctuated by crises and explosive episodes, unfolds like a brilliant historical novel. Strong was particularly attuned to the shifting moods in the North, to what he called ''the great mass of selfishness, frivolity, invincible prejudice and indifference to national life'' that hampered the Union war effort. His eyewitness accounts - whether of the 1863 Draft Riots, field hospitals teeming with wounded men, or his meetings with leaders such as Grant and Lincoln - are remarkably vivid and suffused with novelistic detail. And while Strong''s reflections on the war and the political situation are valuable because they often reflect ''the pulse of public opinion'' in the North, as the historian James M. McPherson writes, they also reveal the singular intelligence of an extraordinary writer whose views - above all toward President Lincoln - evolved over the course of the war. Carefully selected and rigorously faithful to Strong''s handwritten diaries, this Library of America edition presents an entirely new transcription of Strong''s text, superseding the only previous version, published in 1952 and now long out of print.

Complete with helpful notes about each short story''s biographical and cultural contexts. ''There are just as many real Christmas stories as ever, if we would only dig ''em up,'' wrote William Sydney Porter. The first short story he published under the pen name O. Henry was a holiday tale (''Whistling Dick''s Christmas Stocking''), while his best-known work, ''The Gift of the Magi,'' has inspired countless Yuletide movies and television episodes. Library of America presents all seven of his seasonal offerings-including two about Thanksgiving, the ''one day that is purely American'': The Purple Dress; Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen; Whistling Dick''s Christmas Stocking; A Chaparral Christmas Gift; Christmas by Injunction; The Gift of the Magi; Compliments of the Season. You''ll meet characters only O. Henry could have imagined: Maida, a shop clerk who scrimps and saves for a new dress to wear to the employee holiday party. Stuffy Pete, a homeless man who suffers through the generosity of back-to-back Thanksgiving dinners. The Frio Kid, a murderous outlaw who unexpectedly commits a single act of generosity. Whistling Dick, a tramp who stumbles upon a potentially lethal act of arson and robbery. Cherokee, a gold prospector who strikes it rich and decides to play Santa Claus. And Fuzzy, an alcoholic ''soldier of misfortune,'' who stumbles upon the lost rag doll belonging to a millionaire''s five-year-old daughter. Always witty, often outrageously funny, and filled with O. Henry''s famous plot twists, these stories take readers from New Mexico and Texas, through New Orleans, and to New York City to find the holiday spirit all across America.

Helen Vendler was our greatest reader of poetry, a scholar who illuminated its inner mechanisms and emotional roots for a wide audience. Always attentive to the stylistic and imaginative features of a poem, Vendler addresses the work of a wide range of American, English, and Irish poets both the canonical and the unexpected in 13 essays: Walt Whitman, author of the first PTSD poem. Sylvia Plath, and the lost poetry of motherhood. William Cowper, James Merrill, and A. R. Ammons on poetic charm. Emily Bronte and Emily Dickinson, linked by a poetic mystery. Ocean Vuong and the shaping imagination of poetry today, or a literary Wallace Stevens and the enigma of beauty. In these and other essays Vendler demonstrates once again why the Irish poet Seamus Heaney called her ''the best close reader of poems to be found on the literary pages.'' The thirteen poignant essays gathered here were all published in the last three years of Vendler''s life, in Liberties magazine, and intended as her final book. The author''s preface was completed only three days before her death, at age ninety.

W.E.B. Du Bois famously identified ''the problem of the color-line'' as the defining issue in American life in the twentieth century. The powerful writings gathered here reveal the many ways Americans, Black and white, fought against white supremacist efforts to police the colour line, envisioning a better America in the face of disenfranchisement, segregation, and widespread lynching, mob violence, and police brutality. Jim Crow: Voices from a Century of Struggle brings together speeches, pamphlets, newspaper and magazine articles, public testimony and appeals, judicial opinions, and poems and song lyrics from the end of Reconstruction in 1876 to the Boston busing crisis of 1974-76. This volume includes writing by both famous and lesser known individuals, including: - Frederick Douglass on the importance of voting rights - Ida B. Wells on the scourge of lynching - Richard T. Greener''s scathing critique of America''s ''White Problem'' - Booker T. Washington''s historic Atlanta address - John Marshall Harlan''s eloquent and prophetic dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson - William Monroe Trotter''s dramatic White House confrontation with Woodrow Wilson - Alain Locke''s tribute to ''the New Negro'' - Thurgood Marshall on police brutality in wartime Detroit - Rosa Parks''s appeal for justice for Recy Taylor - Earl Warren''s landmark opinion in Brown - Fannie Lou Hamer''s eloquent challenge to disenfranchisement in Mississippi - and James Baldwin on the myths and meaning of the American Dream. As the teaching of our nation''s history, especially the history of race in America, becomes increasingly contested, this book will serve as a vital resource, a crucial reminder of where we''ve been, how far we''ve come, and how long the road ahead remains.

W.E.B. Du Bois famously identified ''the problem of the color-line'' as the defining issue in American life. The powerful writings gathered here reveal the many ways Americans, Black and white, fought against white supremacist efforts to police the colour line, envisioning a better America in the face of disenfranchisement, segregation, and widespread lynching, mob violence, and police brutality. Jim Crow: Voices from a Century of Struggle, Part Two brings together speeches, pamphlets, newspaper and magazine articles, public testimony and appeals, judicial opinions, and poems and song lyrics - more than ninety essential texts in all - from the end of the bloody ''Red Summer'' of 1919 to the Boston busing crisis of 1974-76. This volume includes writing by both famous and lesser known individuals, including: - B. C. Franklin on the Tulsa Massacre - Robert Russa Moton''s suppressed address on the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial - Alain Locke''s tribute to ''the New Negro'' - Ned Cobb''s recounting of the harsh realities of sharecropping - Thurgood Marshall on police brutality in wartime Detroit - Rosa Parks''s appeal for justice for Recy Taylor - Earl Warren''s landmark opinion in Brown - Paul Robeson''s defiant response to congressional inquisitors - Fannie Lou Hamer''s eloquent challenge to disenfranchisement in Mississippi and James Baldwin on the myths and meaning of the American Dream. Also presented are white supremacist writings from the 1920s Klan and the Dixiecrats of 1948; examples of Southern voter literacy tests; blues lyrics sung by Bessie Smith and Big Bill Broonzy; Robert F. Williams''s controversial call for armed Black self-defense; speeches by Marcus Garvey and Stokeley Carmichael; letters in the Black press about Confederate monuments; Ann Moody on her childhood in segregated Mississippi; and Mary McLeod Bethune''s advocacy for reproductive rights as an essential element of democratic freedom. As the teaching of our nation''s history, especially the history of race in America, becomes increasingly contested, this book will serve as a vital resource, a crucial reminder of where we''ve been, how far we''ve come, and how long the road ahead remains.

''Few presidents ever thought about words as carefully as John Quincy Adams. Thankfully, we can now hear his words again, in this instantly essential volume.''-Ted Widmer, historian and former presidential speechwriter. John Quincy Adams was one of the most accomplished American statesmen of his or any era. He brought all his eloquence, erudition, and fierce energy to bear on the politics of the nation over the course of a remarkable career that spanned from the founding era to the sectional crisis that preceded the Civil War. Despite a persistent interest in this pivotal figure, there has never been a single-volume collection of Adams''s essential political writings, until now. Here, for the first time in an edition for general readers and students alike, are the profound insights of a far-seeing political leader who was also a consummate American stylist. From his prophetic college commencement address in 1787 to his vigorous denunciation of slavery in 1843, this Library of America volume offers a compact and compelling record of America''s fractious evolution as a democratic republic, presenting some of the most important political writings in our history. These writings are more urgently needed than ever. In the words of biographer Fred Kaplan: ''His values, his definition of leadership, and his vision for the nation''s future - particularly the difficulty of transforming vision into reality in a country that often appears ungovernable - are as much about twenty-first century America as about Adams''s life and times.''

The most authoritative edition ever published: Read Gatsby exactly as Fitzgerald intended - and get an inside look at its composition and publication. Boats against the current, we are borne back ceaselessly to The Great Gatsby. Now, in this deluxe annotated anniversary edition, James L. W. West provides running commentary on F. Scott Fitzgerald''s classic novel, glossing contexts, language, literary allusions, and contemporary references. Dozens of illustrations and photographs throughout the volume vividly recreate the Jazz Age world of Fitzgerald''s most famous work and chronicle its rich cultural afterlife, encouraging readers to linger in the margins of this deluxe annotated edition. Drawn from the authoritative Library of America edition of Fitzgerald''s writings, this deluxe edition features: A new introduction by Amor Towles, bestselling author of Rules of Civility and A Gentleman in Moscow; a corrected text of Gatsby based on Fitzgerald''s composite manuscript, working galleys, and personal copies; restored American spellings and emendations made by Fitzgerald throughout the book''s life; 13 annotated letters between Fitzgerald and Gatsby''s star editor Maxwell Perkins; a detailed chronology of Fitzgerald''s life and career, plus extensive explanatory and textual notes. With stunning illustrations, insightful commentary, and fascinating insights into the composition, editing, and publication of The Great Gatsby, this 100th anniversary edition of ''the Great American novel'' is the most authoritative ever published, a must for any fan of this landmark American novel, and anyone interested in the life and literature of the Jazz Age.

Transcendentalist, journalist, feminist, activist, public intellectual, war correspondent, poet: Margaret Fuller''s achievement in her short life was as diverse, wide-ranging, and radical as her multi-generic writings. Now, at long last, this pioneering writer joins Library of America with the most comprehensive and most authoritative version of her writings ever published. Here are her two best-known books: Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, an account of her travels to the Great Lakes, a plea for better treatment of the American Indian peoples, and a sketchbook of Fuller''s thought; and Woman in the Nineteenth Century, the foundational document of American feminism and the first major work on women''s rights since Wollstonecraft''s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman fifty-three years earlier. Joining them are a generous selection of Fuller''s published essays and journalism, including ''American Literature'' and her reviews and columns for the New York Tribune, as well as her war correspondence from besieged Rome in 1849; unpublished writings and selections from Fuller''s journals, many previously unknown and newly transcribed for this volume; and a selection of Fuller''s letters, including three newly translated from the original Italian. Rounding out the volume are a chronology by Fuller''s biographer Megan Marshall, along with helpful notes identifying Fuller''s many allusions and quotations, and an index.

Black speculative fiction has never been better than it is here and now. On the shoulders of Afrofuturist masters like Octavia E. Butler and Samuel R. Delany and pioneering visionaries before them, a new, abundant, and brilliant generation of contemporary Black authors, some of them just beginning their careers, is conjuring up a very real renaissance. Edited by SF-expert andre carrington, and including Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award winners alongside emerging and experimental voices, The Black Fantastic showcases the artistry of these breakout literary stars and celebrates the diversity of their talents. Including Afrofuturist science fiction, weird and fantastic tales, horror and the paranormal, apocalyptic lyricism, time travel, superheroes, and more, here are twenty mindblowing, horror-strewn, weird, woke, nerdy, terrifying, liberating, fantastic, utopian, surreal, genre-defying and empowering short stories, all of them worth reading and rereading now and far into futurity. Reclaiming histories of racism and oppression and seizing the day, these writers are forging kaleidoscopic new senses of Black identity, community, and imaginative freedom.