- Uncle's Tom Cabin: bestseller of nineteenth century. Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, published in the U.S. in 1851-52. Over 300,000 ncopies sold in it's first year, only in the U.S.
- William Dean Howells: champion of realism. He was an American realist author and literacy critic. He wrote the Christmas story Christmas every day as well as poems, novels, sketches, stories and essays.
- Main Traveled Roads: Hamlin Garland. Published in 1891. It is a collection of short stories set in the "Middle Border", the northwestern prairie states of Winsconsin, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota.
- The Red Badge of Courage: Stephen Crane. Published in 1895, it's topic is the American Civil War. It tells the war from a soldier's perspective for the first time.