A master of naturalism, Theodore Dreiser brought the American novel into the twentieth century. Fascinated by the city street, its parade of fashion and its threat of poverty and degradation, his journalistic eye lets us see as they were first seen the now familiar realities of modern living. "Sister Carrie" traces the fate of a small-town girl drawn into the brutal metropolitan worlds of Chicago and New York, and Sinclair Lewis called it "the first...

Nathaniel Hawthorne's gripping psychological drama concerns the Pyncheon family, a dynasty founded on pious theft, who live for generations under a dead man's curse until their house is finally exorcised by love.

To Have and Have Not is the dramatic, brutal story of Harry Morgan, an honest boat owner who is forced into running contraband between Cuba and Key West as a means of keeping his crumbling family financially afloat. His adventures lead him into the world of the wealthy and dissipated yachtsmen who swarm the region, and involve him in a strange and unlikely love affair.In this harshly realistic, yet oddly tender and wise novel, Hemingway perceptively...

Known primarily for her classic and haunting story "The Yellow Wallpaper," Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an enormously influential American feminist and sociologist. Her early-twentieth-century writings continue to inspire writers and activists today. This collection includes selections from both her fiction and nonfiction work. In addition to the title story, there are seven short stories collected here that combine humor, anger, and startling vision...

A collection of eight critical essays on Thoreau's "Walden" arranged in chronological order of publication.