1871 Best Seller.

From age 19 Eggleston was an itinerant preacher until travelling broke his health.

The books relates the experiences of a young man sent to be the only teacher of a backwoods rural Indiana town. It is an early example of American realist fiction.

1895 Best Seller.

One of the most influential anti-war stories ever written The Red Badge of Courage was adapted as a film in 1951 by John Huston. Crane wanted to show what war was like and achieved a ground breaking 'psychological portrayal of fear'. The story follows an archetypical 19 year old recruit in the American Civil War.

Publishers Weekly #1 Best Seller for 1918.

An epic novel set against the construction of the Union-Pacific Railroad between 1864 and 1869 and the introduction of the telegraph. Full of wonderfully drawn characters and a central romantic thread.

1859 Best Seller.

The novel follows the orphaned Beulah from childhood in the Antebellum South through a troubled and stormy struggle for independence.

1898 Best Seller.

A new minister arrives at a mining and lumber boomtown in the 1880's West. He is determined to 'clean up the town' and win a few souls, but the task proves more challenging than he anticipated.

1867 Best Seller.

The novel tells the story of a young boy 'Dick' and his climb to success. Dick has a low start in life growing up on the streets of post civil war New York City but he is honest and hardworking and his loyalty and persistence pay off.

The temptations of illicit passion are a theme in Ethan Frome. Wharton had been advised to take up writing more seriously to relieve her stress and tension, and many point to the possibility of autobiographical elements in the novel. Wharton delivers austere and penetrating impressions of rural working-class New England as the environment to explore Ethan Frome's marriage to an unsympathetic Zeena and the infatuation he develops for their maid.