Must-Reads from the 1800s

Wondering what to read next? Wish you had paid more attention in literature class? Didn't get a chance to go to literature class? Pick something from this list and share what you think in over in our new Facebook group Harriet Beecher Stowe House Community Connection.

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Perspectives from the Eighteenth Century (1700s)

• Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters III and IX from Letters from an American Farmer  (1782)
• Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography (1789; 1818; 1981)
• The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African Written by Himself (1789)

 
The Nineteenth Century (1800s)
 
A Native American Autobiography
     William Apess, A Son of the Forest (1829)
 
Transcendentalism 
Transcendentalism is the belief that the world we experience through our senses is less real than and only a symbol of the spiritual world behind it.  In our best moments, we “transcend” (literally, “go across”) to that spiritual realm. Experiencing great (transcendentalist) literature can be a way to do that.

• Ralph Waldo Emerson, these essays: Nature (1836), “The American Scholar” (1837), “The Divinity School Address” (1838), “Self-Reliance” (1841), “The Poet” (1844), “John Brown” (1860)
• Henry David Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government” (1849) and Walden (1854)

 
The American Romance 
“Romance” in this sense refers to fiction that deals with the unusual, even the extraordinary, in character and event, described in poetic language; it’s the opposite of realism, which becomes the dominant form in American fiction after the Civil War, although elements of the romance remain even in those texts.

• Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850) if you haven’t reread it as an adult.  It’s much better than when you read it in high school. If you have read it recently or can’t  stand the thought of reading it again, try some of Hawthorne’s great short stories, most of which he wrote before Scarlet Letter: “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” (1832),  “Young Goodman Brown” (1835), “The Minister’s Black Veil” (1836), “The Birthmark,” (1843), “Rappaccini’s Daughter” (1844; film version in PBS American Short Story Series 2, 1980), “Ethan Brand” (1851)
•  Edgar Allan Poe, these short stories: “Ligeia,” (1838), “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), “William Wilson” (1839), “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843), “The Masque of the Red Death” (1842), “The Black Cat” (1843), “The Purloined Letter” (1844), “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846) 
• Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)
• Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills (1861)

 
Two Very Different Poets

• Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass (1855), “Song of Myself” (1855; 1881),

            “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (1856), “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” (1859),
            “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (1865)

• Emily Dickinson, “These are the days when Birds come back –“ (1859), “Safe in their    Alabaster Chambers – “ (1859), “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church” (1861),

            “There’s a certain Slant of light,” (1862), “I like a look of Agony,” (1862), “I felt a
           Funeral in my Brain,” (1862), “After great pain, a formal feeling comes – ” (1862),
           “One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunted – “ (1862), “The Soul selects her own
           Society – “ (1862), “Because I could not stop for Death – “ (1862), “I heard a Fly buzz –
           when I died – “ (1863), “Much Madness is divinest Sense – “ (1863), “Publication – is
           the Auction” (1863), “A narrow Fellow in the Grass” (1865), “Tell all the truth but tell
           it slant – “ (1872)
 
Focus on Slavery (the central problem of the US)

• Freedom Narratives (formerly known as slave narratives)

      Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845)
      Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)

• Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)

 
Post-Civil War: The Age of Realism
In literature realism is the opposite of romance. Realistic fiction tells stories about the ordinary in character and event in simpler, direct language. Of course, there are always exceptions, and romance elements remain in some of these works.

• Henry James, Washington Square (1880) or, if you prefer to follow James into the next century during his late “major phase,” try “The Beast in the Jungle” (1903)
• Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
• Four important short stories by women: Sarah Orne Jewett, “A White Heron” (1886) and “The Foreigner” (1900); Mary Wilkins Freeman, “The Revolt of ‘Mother’” (1891);
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892)
• Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Iola Leroy (1892)
• Abraham Cahan, Yekl (1896) and the 1975 movie based on it, Hester Street
• Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1899)
• Charles W. Chesnutt, The Conjure Woman (1899)

 
The Beginning of Naturalism
Naturalism in fiction that explores the possibility that heredity and environment are such powerful influences that we may have no free will.
      Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1895) and “The Veteran” (1896).  If you’re
             burned out on Red Badge, you could read Crane’s 1893 novella Maggie: A Girl of the
             Streets or his great short stories “The Open Boat,” (1897), “The Bride Comes to
             Yellow Sky” (1898), and “The Blue Hotel” (1898).  The last one was made into an
             excellent movie in the 1977 American Short Story Series for PBS.
 
Bonus pick:
My favorite book on American culture is Robert Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (1985, 1996, 2007).  The insights in this book are still timely.  If you read the prefaces and the first 84 pages of the text, you’ll have the basic argument and some useful terminology and a good perspective for analyzing American literature and culture.  

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About the author:
Dr. John Getz, Professor Emeritus, Xavier University, retired in 2017 after teaching English there for 45 years.  He specializes in American literature, especially nineteenth century, as well as the intersections of literature and peace studies. He has written articles on a variety of authors including Edith Wharton, Sherwood Anderson, and Ursula Le Guin. He appears in the documentary film Becoming Harriet Beecher Stowe, scheduled for release in spring 2020 by Fourth Wall Films.   ​