In his first novel to follow the publication of his enormous success, The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck s vision comes wonderfully to life in this imaginative and unsentimental chronicle of a bus traveling California s back roads, transporting the lost and the lonely, the good and the greedy, the stupid and the scheming, the beautiful and the vicious away from their shattered dreams and, possibly, toward the promise of the future. This edition features an introduction by Gary Scharnhorst. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators."

"It Can't Happen Here" is the only one of Sinclair Lewis's later novels to match the power of "Main Street, ""Babbitt," and "Arrowsmith." A cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy, it is an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fascism could take hold in America. Written during the Great Depression, when the country was largely oblivious to Hitler's aggression, it juxtaposes sharp political satire with the chillingly realistic rise of a president who becomes a dictator to save the nation from welfare cheats, sex, crime, and a liberal press. Called "a message to thinking Americans" by the" Springfield Republican" when it was published in 1935, "It Can't Happen Here "is a shockingly prescient novel that remains as fresh and contemporary as today's news.
With an Introduction by Michael Meyer
and a New Afterword

The Scarlet Letter is virtually unique among works of American fiction because it has not lapsed from print in over 140 years. The history of its reception, which is fully articulated in the volume introduction, may be read as a case study in canon formation. The collection of documents in the volume outline the highs and lows of Nathaniel Hawthorne's literary reputation and the elevation of his first and best-known romance to the rank of masterpiece and classic. Also included is a selective bibliography of modern scholarship. Among the early documents reprinted are contemporary news accounts of Hawthorne's dismissal from the Salem Custom House in June 1849, which provide the immediate background to "The Custom House" introduction in the story, the publisher James T. Fields's anecdotal version of the book's composition history, and a generous sheaf of notices from both American and British newspapers upon its publication in March, 1850. Of special value are the various essays and other materials that trace the institutionalization of the romance within the genteel tradition of American letters in the late nineteenth century. More recently, The Scarlet Letter has become something of an academic shibboleth, inspiring dozens of New Critical, psychoanalytical, feminist, and other readings, which are also represented in this collection. Prominent among modern critics whose essays appear are Neal Frank Doubleday, Darrel Abel, and Nina Baym. A number of reviews of theatrical and cinematic adaptations of the story also underscore its stature as a cultural icon. This volume is essential for serious research on Nathaniel Hawthorne and provides a convenient body of valuable commentary accessibleeven to the student reading The Scarlet Letter for the first time.

Better known in 1882 as a cultural icon than a serious writer, Oscar Wilde was brought to North America for a major lecture tour on Aestheticism and the decorative arts. With characteristic aplomb, he adopted the role as the ambassador of Aestheticism, and he tried out a number of phrases, ideas, and strategies that ultimately made him famous as a novelist and playwright. This exceptional volume cites all ninety-one of Wilde's interviews and contains transcripts of forty-eight of them, and it also includes his lecture on his travels in America.

Better known in 1882 as a cultural icon than a serious writer, Oscar Wilde was brought to North America for a major lecture tour on Aestheticism and the decorative arts. With characteristic aplomb, he adopted the role as the ambassador of Aestheticism, and he tried out a number of phrases, ideas, and strategies that ultimately made him famous as a novelist and playwright. This exceptional volume cites all ninety-one of Wilde's interviews and contains transcripts of forty-eight of them, and it also includes his lecture on his travels in America.

In Ragged Dick, Horatio Alger's most successful book, Alger codified the basic formula he would follow in nearly a hundred subsequent novels for boys: a young hero, inexperienced in the temptations of the city but morally armed to resist them, is unexpectedly forced to earn a livelihood. The hero's exemplary struggle - to retain his virtue, to clear his name of accusations, and to gain economic independence - was the basis of the Alger plot. Hugely popular at the turn of the twentieth century, Alger's works have at different times been framed as a model for the "American dream" and as dangerously exciting sensationalism for young readers; Gary Scharnhorst's new introduction separates the myth of Alger as "success ideologue" from the more complex messages conveyed in his work. Ragged Dick is paired in this edition with Risen from the Ranks, another coming-of-age story of a young man achieving respectability. Historical appendices include extensive contemporary reviews, material on the "success myth" associated with Alger, and parodies of Alger's work.

This three-volume, hardcover set of Gary Scharnhorst's biography of Samuel Clemens includes The Life of Mark Twain: The Early Years, 1835-1871; The Life of Mark Twain: The Middle Years, 1871-1891; and The Life of Mark Twain: The Final Years, 1891-1910.

The last installment of Scharnhorst's three-volume biography chronicles the life of Samuel Clemens between his family's extended trip to Europe in 1891 and his death in 1910. During this period, Clemens was one of the most famous people in the world. He also grapples with bankruptcy, returns to the lecture circuit, loses two daughters and his wife, and writes some of his darkest, most critical works in the last years of his life.

Bret Harte was the best-known and highest-paid writer in America in the early 1870s, yet his vexed attempts to earn a living by his pen led to the failure of his marriage and, in 1878, his departure for Europe. Gary Scharnhorst's biography of Harte traces the growing commercial appeal of western fiction and drama on both sides of the Atlantic during the Gilded Age, a development in which Harte played a crucial role. Harte's pioneering use of California local color in such stories as ""The Outcasts of Poker Flat"" challenged genteel assumptions about western writing and helped open eastern papers to contributions by Mark Twain and others. The popularity of Bret Harte's writings was driven largely by a literary market that his western stories helped create. The first Harte biography in nearly seventy years to be written entirely from primary sources, this book documents Harte's personal relationships and, in addition, his negotiations with various publishers, agents, and theatrical producers as he exploited popular interest in the American West.

No one knew how the blue-eyed, blond-haired white baby came to be abandoned, but the Crow tribe that found him raised him as one of its own. As he grew into adolescence, White Weasel was taken to Crooked-Bear, a white man who had long ago abandoned society for a solitary mountain existence and who acted as counselor to the Crow elders. Under Crooked-Bear's tutelage, White Weasel was schooled in white ways and rechristened John Ermine. Frederic Remington's compelling tale relates Ermine's successful reintroduction into white society, his heroic exploits as a scout in the military, and his growing interest in a white lady, Miss Katherine Searles. In his love for Katherine, Ermine must face the complexities and inequalities of American society. Although American culture may well laud Ermine's military prowess and personal integrity, since he is "wild" he can never truly rise through the ranks of society. It is inevitable that Ermine's story ends in tragedy.
"John Ermine of the Yellowstone" is both an epic Western in the classic sense and a complex tale that captures the conflict between European Americans and Native Americans in the Wild West. John Ermine is the tragic character caught between two cultures, unable to assimilate fully into either. Famed artist Frederic Remington uses his pen to convey the irreparable stalemate between two groups of people in an untamed West while making a moving argument for the preservation of a truly wild western front.

Drawing on his own combat experience with the Union forces, John W. De Forest crafted a war novel like nothing before it in the annals of American literature. His first-hand knowledge of "the wilderness of death" made its way on to the pages of his riveting novel with devastating effect. Whether depicting the tedium before combat, the unspoken horror of battle, or the grisly butchery of the field hospital, De Forest broke new ground, anticipating the realistic war writings of Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, and Tim O'Brien.

A commercial failure in its own day, De Forest's story was praised by Henry James and William Dean Howells, who, comparing it favorably to War and Peace, acclaimed the book "one of the best American novels ever written."

This book begins the first multi-volume biography of Samuel Clemens to appear in over a century. In the succeeding years, Clemens biographers have either tailored their narratives to fit the parameters of a single volume or focused on a particular period or aspect of Clemens's life, because the whole of that epic life cannot be compressed into a single volume. In The Life of Mark Twain, Gary Scharnhorst has chosen to write a complete biography plotted from beginning to end, from a single point of view, on an expansive canvas. With dozens of Mark Twain biographies available, what is left unsaid? On average, a hundred Clemens letters and a couple of Clemens interviews surface every year. Scharnhorst has located documents relevant to Clemens's life in Missouri, along the Mississippi River, and in the West, including some which have been presumed lost. Over three volumes, Scharnhorst elucidates the life of arguably the greatest American writer and reveals the alchemy of his gifted imagination.

The first book-length treatment of Mark Twain’s public persona as depicted in newspaper and magazine illustrations Cartoons and Caricatures of Mark Twain: Reformer and Social Critic, 1869–1910 reproduces for students and scholars of Twain and American literature a provocative series of visual texts that illustrate the growth of Twain’s reputation as a social and political satirist. Myrick and Scharnhorst trace the evolution of Twain’s depiction across more than forty years and seventy illustrations—from portrayals of the famous author as a court jester adorned with cap and bells, to a regally haloed king with a royal train—offering a new perspective on his influence. Although he was among the most photographed figures of the nineteenth century, Myrick and Scharnhorst focus on a medium that Twain, a genius of self-promotion and an expert at brand management, could not control. As a result, Myrick and Scharnhorst have compiled an innovative and incisive type of reception history. This initial volume of Cartoons and Caricatures of Mark Twain emphasizes Twain’s reputation as a political satirist. It illustrates the popular response to many famous and infamous episodes in his career, such as the storm of controversy that surrounded the publication of his anti-imperialist writings at the turn of the twentieth century. Routinely depicted with hair like a fright wig, a beak-like nose, and a cigar in hand, no matter the context or the costume, Twain was not only the greatest writer in American literary history but perhaps the most iconic figure in American popular culture.

Over the final twenty years of his life, Mark Twain was an incredibly controversial figure. He evolved from the "clown prince of American literature" into a biting social critic and political observer. While some pundits hailed him as a satirist equal to Cervantes and Jonathan Swift, others excoriated him as a "degenerate literary freak" who wielded a "scurrilous and venomous pen." This volume traces the evolution of Mark Twain's public image between 1891 and his death in 1910. It features hundreds of reviews and other critical notices printed in magazines and newspapers across the U.S. and other English-speaking countries. This selected sample represents the full range of critical opinion, whether favorable or hostile, about Mark Twain's late writings. Sources reflect geographical differences in Twain's contemporary reputation, such as the conflicted responses in the British colonies towards Mark Twain's anti-imperialism and the pious disapproval in the American heartland for his attacks on foreign missions.

Julian Hawthorne (1846-1934), Nathaniel Hawthorne's only son, lived a long and influential life marked by bad circumstances and worse choices. Raised among luminaries such as Thoreau, Emerson, and the Beecher family, Julian became a promising novelist in his twenties, but his writing soon devolved into mediocrity.

What talent the young Hawthorne had was spent chasing across the changing literary and publishing landscapes of the period in search of a paycheck, writing everything from potboilers to ad copy. Julian was consistently short of funds because--as biographer Gary Scharnhorst is the first to reveal--he was supporting two households: his wife in one and a longtime mistress in the other.

The younger Hawthorne's name and work ethic gave him influence in spite of his haphazard writing. Julian helped to found "Cosmopolitan" and "Collier's Weekly." As a Hearst stringer, he covered some of the era's most important events: McKinley's assassination, the Galveston hurricane, and the Spanish-American War, among others.

When Julian died at age 87, he had written millions of words and more than 3,000 pieces, out-publishing his father by a ratio of twenty to one. Gary Scharnhorst, after his own long career including works on Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and other famous writers, became fascinated by the leaps and falls of Julian Hawthorne. This biography shows why.

New in Paperback! Gilman (1860-1935), best known today for "The Yellow Wall-paper" and Women and Economics and a prolific writer, was virtually forgotten until the 1970s. Even now her publications are still largle inaccessible, and this first comprehensive bibliography traces the original appearances of her works, their republications, and their translations. Cloth edition published in 1985.

The first book-length treatment of Mark Twain’s public persona as depicted in newspaper and magazine illustrations Cartoons and Caricatures of Mark Twain: Reformer and Social Critic, 1869–1910 reproduces for students and scholars of Twain and American literature a provocative series of visual texts that illustrate the growth of Twain’s reputation as a social and political satirist. Myrick and Scharnhorst trace the evolution of Twain’s depiction across more than forty years and seventy illustrations—from portrayals of the famous author as a court jester adorned with cap and bells, to a regally haloed king with a royal train—offering a new perspective on his influence. Although he was among the most photographed figures of the nineteenth century, Myrick and Scharnhorst focus on a medium that Twain, a genius of self-promotion and an expert at brand management, could not control. As a result, Myrick and Scharnhorst have compiled an innovative and incisive type of reception history. This initial volume of Cartoons and Caricatures of Mark Twain emphasizes Twain’s reputation as a political satirist. It illustrates the popular response to many famous and infamous episodes in his career, such as the storm of controversy that surrounded the publication of his anti-imperialist writings at the turn of the twentieth century. Routinely depicted with hair like a fright wig, a beak-like nose, and a cigar in hand, no matter the context or the costume, Twain was not only the greatest writer in American literary history but perhaps the most iconic figure in American popular culture.

A compelling critical investigation into Gilman's conception of setting and place. Charlotte Perkins Gilman and a Woman's Place in America is a pioneering collection that probes how depictions of space, confinement, and liberation establish both the difficulty and necessity of female empowerment. Turning Victorian notions of propriety and a woman's place on its ear, this finely crafted essay collection studies Gilman's writings and the manner in which they push back against societal norms and reject male-dominated confines of space. The contributors present fascinating and innovative readings of some of Gilman's most significant works. By examining the settings in ""The Yellow Wallpaper"" and Herland, for example, the volume analyzes Gilman's construction of place, her representations of male dominance and female subjugation, and her analysis of the rules and obligations that women feel in conforming to their assigned place: the home. Additionally, this volume delineates female resistance to this conformity. Contributors highlight how Gilman's narrators often choose resistance over obedient captivity, breaking free of the spaces imposed upon them in order to seek or create their own habitats. Through biographical interpretations of Gilman's work that focus on the author's own renouncement of her ""natural"" role of wife and mother, contributors trace her relocation to the American West in an attempt to appropriate the masculinized spaces of work and social organization. Engaging, well-researched, and deftly written, the essays in this collection will appeal to scholars of Gilman, literature, and gender issues alike.

This is a comprehensive collection of authentic recipes, some 500 in all, for drinks and dishes that more than 150 American authors since the late 18th century are known to have enjoyed. The book should appeal to amateur chefs and so-called ""foodies"" who may want to test some of the recipes in their kitchens; to American literature instructors and scholars who may use it as a teaching tool; and general readers who will read it for pleasure. In effect, this is a celebrity cookbook to which many literary celebrities, living and dead, have contributed, among them Harriet Beecher Stowe, Rudolfo Anaya, Denise Chavez, Emily Dickinson, William Faulkner, Harland Ellison, Ursula Le Guin, Benjamin Franklin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Jack London, Allen Ginsberg, Lafcadio Hearn, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Elmore Leonard, Bobbie Ann Mason, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Leslie Marmon Silko, Gertrude Stein, Onoto Watanna, Eudora Welty, Walt Whitman, and Gerald Vizenor.

"Sinclair Lewis Remembered" is a collection of reminiscences and memoirs by contemporaries, friends, and associates of Lewis that offers a revealing and intimate portrait of this complex and significant Nobel Prize-winning American writer."
"After a troubled career as a student at Yale, Sinclair Lewis turned to literature as his livelihood, publishing numerous works of popular fiction that went unnoticed by critics. With the 1920s, however, came "Main Street," Lewis's first critical success, which was soon followed by "Babbitt," "Arrowsmith," "Elmer Gantry," and "Dodsworth"--five of the most influential social novels in the history of American letters, all written within one decade.
Nevertheless, Lewis's Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930 led to controversy. Writers such as Theodore Dreiser, William Faulkner, and Thomas Mann expressed their dissent with the decision. Unable to match his previous success, Lewis suffered from alcoholism, alienated colleagues, and embraced unpopular political positions. The nadir for Lewis's literary reputation was Mark Schorer's 1961 biography, "Sinclair Lewis: An American Life," which helped to legitimize the dismissal of Lewis's entire body of work.
Recent scholarly research has seen a resurgence of interest in Lewis and his writings. The multiple and varied perspectives found in "Sinclair Lewis Remembered," edited by Gary Scharnhorst and Matthew Hofer, illustrate uncompromised glimpses of a complicated writer who should not be forgotten. The more than 115 contributions to this volume include reminiscences by Upton Sinclair, Edna Ferber, Alfred Harcourt, Samuel Putnam, H. L. Mencken, John Hersey, Hallie Flanagan, and many others.

Designed for the general reader, this set presents literature not as a simple inventory of authors or titles but rather as a historical and cultural field viewed from a wide array of contemporary perspectives. The set, which is "new historicist" in its approach to literary criticism, endorses the notion that not only does history affect literature, but literature itself informs history.