200 Most Important Works of American Literature
1-20: Early American Literature
The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America by Anne
Bradstreet
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin
Franklin
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards
The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James
Madison, and John Jay
Common Sense by Thomas Paine
The Pioneers by James Fenimore Cooper
Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick
Douglass
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Minister's Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne
1|P age
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Devil and Tom Walker by Washington Irving
Ben Hur by Lew Wallace
The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
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21-40: Transcendentalism and Romanticism
Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
The American Scholar by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville
Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson
The World of Washington Irving by Robert S. Arrington
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
2|P age
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
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41-60: Harlem Renaissance and Modernism
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Native Son by Richard Wright
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Beloved by Toni Morrison
3|P age
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
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61-80: American Poetry
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Fire and Ice by Robert Frost
Howl by Allen Ginsberg
A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg
The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes
I, Too by Langston Hughes
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
Howl by Allen Ginsberg
The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams
The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth
4|P age
Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats
The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg
A Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore
Song of Myself by Walt Whitman
Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson
Hope is the Thing with Feathers by Emily Dickinson
The Soldier by Rupert Brooke
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81-100: Short Stories
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor
Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor
The Open Boat by Stephen Crane
The Chrysanthemums by John Steinbeck
The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway
The Last Leaf by O. Henry
5|P age
The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant
The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe
A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell
The Ransom of Red Chief by O. Henry
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber
The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry
The Swimmer by John Cheever
The Monkey’s Paw by W.W. Jacobs
A Piece of Yellow Soap by Frank Sargeson
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101-120: Essays, Non-fiction, and Political Works
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex
Haley
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine
6|P age
The American Revolution: A Constitutional Interpretation by
Charles Howard McIlwain
The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr.
The Problem of the Color Line by W.E.B. Du Bois
The Prison Notebooks by Antonio Gramsci
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
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121-140: Plays and Drama
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
7|P age
The Piano Lesson by August Wilson
The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler
Angels in America by Tony Kushner
The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
The Odd Couple by Neil Simon
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
The Tempest by William Shakespeare
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
—------------------------------------------------------------------------------
141. Beloved by Toni Morrison
142. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
143. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
144. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
145. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
146. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
147. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
8|P age
148. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
149. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
150. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
151. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
152. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
153. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
154. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
155. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
156. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
157. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
158. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
159. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
160. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
161. The American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the
Age of Emerson and Whitman by F.O. Matthiessen
162. The Cambridge Companion to American Literature by
various authors
163. The Norton Anthology of American Literature (various
editions
164. American Literature: A History by various authors
165. A History of American Literature by Richard Gray
9|P age
166. The Literary Criticism of John Crowe Ransom by John
Crowe Ransom
167. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
168. The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary
Poetry by Jahan Ramazani
169. The Harvard Guide to Contemporary American Writing
by various authors
170. Postmodern American Fiction: A Norton Anthology by
various authors
171. The Cambridge History of American Literature (various
volumes)
172. Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for
Expanding the Teaching of Composition by Anne Wysocki
173. The History of American Literature by David Perkins
174. The Oxford Handbook of American Literary History by
various authors
175. Essays of E.B. White by E.B. White
176. The Death of the Author by Roland Barthes
177. Theories of the Novel by various authors
178. Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
179. The Literature of the American South by William L.
Andrews
180. The Norton Anthology of American Literature (8th
edition) by various authors
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181. A Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore
182. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
183. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
184. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
185. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
186. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
187. The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
188. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
189. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
190. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (influenced American
thought)
191. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
192. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
193. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
194. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
195. Lord of the Flies by William Golding (American themes)
196. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
197. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
198. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
199. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
200. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
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