Katherine Anne Porter: Collected Stories and Other Writings (LOA #186)

by Katherine Anne Porter
Katherine Anne Porter: Collected Stories and Other Writings (LOA #186)
Author: Katherine Anne Porter
Publisher: Library of America
Total Pages: 1385
Release: 2008-09-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1598533274
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The Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winning volume of writings from the author of Pale Horse, Pale Rider—now combined with little-known works of prose for the very first time Eudora Welty said that Katherine Anne Porter “writes stories with a power that stamps them to their very last detail on the memory.” Set in her native Texas and her beloved Mexico, prewar Nazi Germany and the gothic Old South, they are stories of love, outrage, betrayal, and spiritual reckoning that are severe but never cruel, and always exquisitely precise. They number fewer than thirty, but as Robert Penn Warren commented, “many are unsurpassed in modern fiction.” The Library of America now reprints the landmark 1965 volume, The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter—which features tales like “Pale Horse, Pale Rider” and “Flowering Judas”—and pairs it with a completely new selection from Porter’s long-out-of-print short prose. Expanding the contents of her 1952 collection The Days Before to include both early journalism and major pieces from her final three decades, the prose works collected here are grouped in four parts: critical essays on writers she loved and learned from, including James, Cather, Lawrence, and Colette; personal essays and speeches on such topics as the craft of writing, her own work, women in myth and in history, and American politics; essays and reports on Mexican life, letters, and revolution; and two previously uncollected forays into autobiography. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

William Wells Brown: Clotel & Other Writings (LOA #247)

by William Wells Brown
William Wells Brown: Clotel & Other Writings (LOA #247)
Author: William Wells Brown
Publisher: Library of America
Total Pages: 1420
Release: 2014-02-20
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1598533142
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A showcase of the extraordinary career America’s first Black novelist and pivotal figure in African American literature “It is difficult to imagine any one of his contemporaries who contributed as much or as richly to so many genres.” —Henry Louis Gates Jr. Born a slave and kept functionally illiterate until he escaped at age nineteen, William Wells Brown (1814–1884) refashioned himself first as an agent of the Underground Railroad, then as an antislavery activist and self-taught orator, and finally as the author of a series of landmark works that made him, like Frederick Douglass, a foundational figure of African American literature. His controversial novel Clotel; or, the President’s Daughter (1853), a fictionalized account of the lives and struggles of Thomas Jefferson’s black daughters and granddaughters, is the first novel written by an African American. This Library of America volume brings it together with Brown’s other groundbreaking works: Narrative of William W. Brown: A Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself (1847), his first published book and an immediate bestseller, which describes his childhood, life in slavery, and eventual escape; later memoirs charting his life during the Civil War and Reconstruction; the first play (The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom, 1858), travelogue (The American Fugitive in Europe, 1855), and history (The Black Man, His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements, 1862) written by an African American; and eighteen speeches and public letters from the 1840s, 50s, and 60s, many collected here for the first time. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

May Swenson: Collected Poems (LOA #239)

by May Swenson
May Swenson: Collected Poems (LOA #239)
Author: May Swenson
Publisher: Library of America
Total Pages: 840
Release: 2013-04-04
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1598532731
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Often compared to the works of E.E. Cummings and Elizabeth Bishop, these poems are a free-ranging exploration of outer and inner worlds, of nature and the human mind In celebration of the centenary of May Swenson’s birth, The Library of America presents a one-volume edition of all of the poems that Swenson published in her lifetime—from her first collection Another Animal (1954) to the innovative shaped poems of Iconographs (1970) to her final work In Other Words (1987)—as well as a selection of previously uncollected work. The collection reveals the sweeping compass of Swenson’s curiosity: nature poems display her keen observation of wildlife; exuberant and erotic love poems celebrate beauty and passion; place poems record her travels to the American Southwest, France, and Italy and her residence in New York City and Sea Cliff, Long Island; verse “analyses” investigate baseball, wave motion, the DNA molecule, bronco busting, James Bond movies, and the first walk on the moon. Swenson was an inveterate reviser: poems in earlier volumes were frequently reworked for inclusion in later volumes, such as To Mix with Time (1963) and New and Selected Things Taking Place (1978). While preserving the order of publication, this volume presents the author’s final or definitive version. Substantive textual variants and title changes are detailed in the notes to the volume. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

John Muir: Nature Writings (LOA #92)

by John Muir
John Muir: Nature Writings (LOA #92)
Author: John Muir
Publisher: Library of America
Total Pages: 946
Release: 1997-04-22
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1598533428
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Known as the "Father of the National Parks," John Muir wrote about the American West with unmatched passion and eloquence—as seen in this stunning, one-volume collection In a lifetime of exploration, writing, and passionate political activism, John Muir became 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 far-seeing prophet of environmental awareness who founded the Sierra Club in 1892, he was also a master of natural description who evoked with unique power and intimacy the untrammeled landscapes of the American West. Nature Writings collects Muir's most significant and best-loved works in a single volume, including: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth (1913), My First Summer in the Sierra (1911), The Mountains of California (1894) and Stickeen (1909). Rounding out the volume is a rich selection of essays—including "Yosemite Glaciers," "God's First Temples," "Snow-Storm on Mount Shasta," "The American Forests," and "Save the Redwoods"—that highlight various aspects of his career: his exploration of the Grand Canyon and of what became Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks, his successful crusades to preserve the wilderness, his early walking tour to Florida, and the Alaska journey of 1879. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

The American Revolution: Writings from the War of Independence 1775-1783 (LOA #123)

by Various
The American Revolution: Writings from the War of Independence 1775-1783 (LOA #123)
Author: Various
Publisher: Library of America
Total Pages: 775
Release: 2001-04-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1598531395
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This comprehensive collection of writings from the War of Independence poses a “subtle but profound challenge to much that we think we know about the founders and their era” (Los Angeles Times) Drawn from letters, diaries, newspaper articles, public declarations, contemporary narratives, and private memoranda, this Library of America volume brings together over 120 pieces by more than seventy participants and eyewitnesses to create a unique literary panorama of the War of Independence. Beginning with Paul Revere’s own narrative of his legendary ride in April 1775 and ending with a moving account of George Washington’s resignation from the command of the Continental Army in December 1783, the volume contains writing that describes the major events of the conflict—the early battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill; the failed American invasion of Canada; the 1776 campaign in New York and New Jersey; the crucial battle of Saratoga; the bitter fighting in the South and along the western frontier; and the decisive triumph at Yorktown. Included are writings by famous figures—Washington Franklin, Jefferson, Benedict Arnold, John and Abigail Adams—and by lesser known participants: Samuel Blachley Webb describing courage and panic at Bunker Hill; Sarah Hodgkins writing longingly to her absent soldier husband; Jabez Fitch recounting the last hours of a wounded American officer in Brooklyn; Albigence Waldo chronicling the privations and miseries of Valley Forge; Otho Holland Williams recording with appealing candor American defeats and victories in South Carolina. The volume also contains writings by American Loyalists and by British officers and officials serving in America that provide provocative insights into the losing side of an epochal conflict. All selections are written by people who were in America at the time of the conflict. The American Revolution also includes a chronology of events, biographical and explanatory notes, and an index.

Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings Vol. 2 1859-1865 (LOA #46)

by Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings Vol. 2 1859-1865 (LOA #46)
Author: Abraham Lincoln
Publisher: Library of America
Total Pages: 844
Release: 1989-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1598531212
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Abraham Lincoln was the greatest writer of the Civil War as well as its greatest political leader. His clear, beautiful, and at times uncompromisingly severe language forever shaped the nation’s understanding of its most terrible conflict. This volume, along with its companion, Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832–1858, comprises the most comprehensive selection ever published. Over 550 speeches, messages, proclamations, letters, and other writings—including the Inaugural and Gettysburg addresses and the moving condolence letter to Mrs. Bixby—record the words and deeds with which Lincoln defended, preserved, and redefined the Union.

H. P. Lovecraft: Tales (LOA #155)

by H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft: Tales (LOA #155)
Author: H. P. Lovecraft
Publisher: Library of America
Total Pages: 1118
Release: 2005-02-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1598532804
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An extensive collection of H.P. Lovecraft’s greatest works of horror and dread, from his early stories to his major classics like “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” and At the Mountains of Madness In this Library of America volume, the best-selling novelist Peter Straub brings together the very best of H. P. Lovecraft's fiction in a treasury guaranteed to bring fright and delight both to longtime fans and to readers new to his work. Early stories such as “The Outsider,” “The Music of Erich Zann,” “Herbert West–Reanimator,” and “The Lurking Fear” demonstrate Lovecraft's uncanny ability to blur the distinction between reality and nightmare, sanity and madness, the human and non-human. “The Horror at Red Hook” and “He” reveal the fascination and revulsion Lovecraft felt for New York City; “Pickman's Model” uncovers the frightening secret behind an artist's work; “The Rats in the Walls” is a terrifying descent into atavistic horror; and “The Colour Out of Space” explores the eerie impact of a meteorite on a remote Massachusetts valley. In such later works as “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Whisperer in Darkness,” “At the Mountains of Madness,” “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” and “The Shadow Out of Time,” Lovecraft developed his own nightmarish mythology in which encounters with ancient, pitiless extraterrestrial intelligences wreak havoc on hapless humans who only gradually begin to glimpse “terrifying vistas of reality, and our frightful position therein.” Moving from old New England towns haunted by occult pasts to Antarctic wastes that disclose appalling secrets, Lovecraft's tales continue to exert a dread fascination. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Shakespeare in America: An Anthology from the Revolution to Now (LOA #251)

by Various
Shakespeare in America: An Anthology from the Revolution to Now (LOA #251)
Author: Various
Publisher: Library of America
Total Pages: 624
Release: 2014-04-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1598534637
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An anthology that traces how Shakespeare has shaped American history and culture—featuring pieces by Founding Fathers, Orson Welles, and other noteworthy figures “The history of Shakespeare in America,” writes James Shapiro in his introduction to this groundbreaking anthology, “is also the history of America itself.” Shakespeare was a central, inescapable part of America’s literary inheritance, and a prism through which crucial American issues—revolution, slavery, war, social justice—were refracted and understood. In tracing the many surprising forms this influence took, Shapiro draws on many genres—poetry, fiction, essays, plays, memoirs, songs, speeches, letters, movie reviews, comedy routines—and on a remarkable range of American writers from Emerson, Melville, Lincoln, and Mark Twain to James Agee, John Berryman, Pauline Kael, and Cynthia Ozick. Americans of the revolutionary era ponder the question “to sign or not to sign;” Othello becomes the focal point of debates on race; the Astor Place riots, set off by a production of Macbeth, attest to the violent energies aroused by theatrical controversies; Jane Addams finds in King Lear a metaphor for American struggles between capital and labor. Orson Welles revolutionizes approaches to Shakespeare with his legendary productions of Macbeth and Julius Caesar; American actors from Charlotte Cushman and Ira Aldridge to John Barrymore, Paul Robeson, and Marlon Brando reimagine Shakespeare for each new era. The rich and tangled story of how Americans made Shakespeare their own is a literary and historical revelation. As a special feature, the book includes a foreword by Bill Clinton, among the latest in a long line of American presidents, including John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and Abraham Lincoln, who, as the collection demonstrates, have turned to Shakespeare’s plays for inspiration.