20th century’s

• Major Authors and Poets of the Twentieth Century

  • Edith Wharton
  • Willa Cather
  • Sherwood Anderson
  • Sinclair Lewis
  • Ernest Hemingway
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • Stephen Vincent Benet
  • John Steinbeck
  • John Dos Passos
  • Thomas Clayton Wolfe
  • William Faulkner
• Edith Wharton


  • The House of Mirth (orphan Lily Bart loves Lawrence Seldon but reject him because he is poor; blackmailed and falsely accused by other men; becomes milliner and takes overdose of sleeping pills)
  • The Age of Innocence (NY 1870s: Neland Archer marries May Welland but loves her cousin Ellen Olenska)
  • Ethan Frome (MA farm: farmer Ethan Frome marries whining hypochondriac Zeena but loves her cousin Mattie; Ethan and Mattie injured in bobsled suicide attempt; Zeena becomes devoted nurse and Mattie becomes nag)
  • The Custom of the Country (Undine Spragg samples pleasures, marries millionaire from hometown)
  • Old New York (4 novellas about 1840 to 1880, including False Dawn [Lewis Raycie buys modern pictures], The Old Maid [Charlotte Lovell's cousin raises her illegitimate daughter Tina], The Spark [Walt Whitman influences old man], New Year's Day [wife sacrifices for sick husband])
• Willa Cather


  • A Lost Lady (Marian Forrester's pioneer husband dies and she becomes mistress of Ivy Peters; Niel Herbert adores her; she disappears to South America)
  • Death Comes for the Archbishop (Jean Latour and Father Joseph Vaillant establish diocese in NM)
  • My Antonia (Bohemian immigrant Antonia Shimerda works on farms after father's suicide, elopes with railway conductor, and marries farmer Anton Cuzak; others include lawyer Jim Burden)
  • O Pioneers (Alexandra Bergson takes over NE farm when dad dies; brother Emil killed; marries Carl Linstrum)
  • One of Ours (Claude Wheeler grows up on Western farm, goes to college, killed in army in France)
  • The Song of the Lark (Coloradoan Thea Kronborg, daughter of Swedish clergyman, goes to Chicago, has affair with Fred Ottenburg, and becomes soprano at Met. Opera House in NY)
  • Alexander's Bridge
  • Youth and the Bright Medusa (stories, including Paul's Case)
• Sherwood Anderson

  • Winesburg Ohio (23 stories; reporter George Willard develops)
  • Dark Laughter
  • The Triumph of the Egg (chicken farmer is unable to perform simple trick with an egg)
• Sinclair Lewis

  • Main Street (Carol Kennicott tires of physician husband Will and tries to bring culture to dull Gopher Praire, MN [based on Sauk Centre])
  • Dodsworth
  • Arrowsmith (Martin Arrowsmith, a bacteriologist, goes to VT farm and West Indies)
• Ernest Hemingway

  • The Sun Also Rises (Lost Generation 1925 France: journalist Jake Barnes narrates; Lady Brett Ashley is divorcing and may love Jake but plans to marry Michael Campbell and has affair with Spanish bullfighter Pedro Romero in Pamplona; others include Greek Bill Gorton and American-Jewish writer Robert Cohn)
  • A Farewell to Arms (WWI ambulance driver Lt. Frederic Henry loves English nurse Catherine Barkley, who becomes pregnant; Henry deserts after Caporetto in Italy and they go to Switzerland, where she dies)
• F. Scott Fitzgerald

  • The Great Gatsby (Jazz Age Long Island: Jay Gatsby loves Daisy Buchanan, cousin of narrator Nick Carraway, but she stays with husband Tom; Daisy runs over Tom's mistress Myrtle Wilson and Tom shoots Jay)
  • Tender Is the Night (wealthy schizophrenic Nicole Warren marries her psychiatrist Dick Diver; she becomes mentally stable but he deteriorates; she leaves him for a lover)
  • This Side of Paradise (spoiled Middle Westerner Amory Blaine goes to Princeton and joins literary cults; loves Rosaline Commase but is rejected; serves in WWI; starts career in advertising)
• Stephen Vincent Benet


  • The Devil and Daniel Webster (NE farmer Jabez Stone sells his soul to the devil but is saved by Webster's oratory before demonic jury)
  • John Brown's Body (Civil War narrative beginning with Harper's Ferry)
  • Western Star
• John Steinbeck

  • Of Mice and Men (strong giant half-wit migrant worker Lennie accidentally kills woman who seduces him and is shot by friend George to protect him from lynch mob)
  • The Grapes of Wrath (Joad family travels from OK to CA during the Great Depression to find work picking fruit; Tom Joad becomes involved in strikes and kills a man; Rose of Sharon has baby)
  • Travels with Charlie
  • In Dubious Battle (Communist Mac's friend Jim Nolan murdered; Doc Burton helps striking CA fruit pickers)
  • East of Eden (Salinas Valley: Adam Trask and Cathy have two sons; Cal kills Aron by telling him mom is a prostitute)
  • Tortilla Flat (carefree Danny meets with simple friends Pablo, Big Joe Portagee, Jesus Maria Corcoran, and Pirate in his home, "like the Round Table")
  • The Pearl (CA Indian pearl-fisher and wife Juana's baby bitten by scorpion; they pay doctor with large pearl)
• John Dos Passos

  • USA Trilogy (panoramic picture of US life from just before WWI to Great Depression; The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money; consists of "newsreels," "camera eyes," and biographies)
  • Manhattan Transfer (NYC: journalist Jimmy Herf and actress wife Ellen Thatcher divorce; Bud Korpenning commits suicide; gambler Joe Harland becomes beggar)
  • Three Soldiers (3 American WWI soldiers: Italian Dan Fuselli, Indianan Chrisfield, musician John Andrews)
• Thomas Clayton Wolfe

  • Look Homeward Angel (describes youth of Eugene Gant in Altamont, Catawba [based on Asheville, NC]; Eugene attends mother's boarding house, has romance, and goes to college; brother Ben Gant dies at St.Louis World's Fair)
  • Of Time and the River (Eugene Gant studies drama at Harvard under James Hatcher; dad dies; tours France; teaches literature in NYC)
  • The Web and the Rock (George Webber goes to "Enfabled Rock" of NY and has affair with scenic designer Mrs. Esther Jack but he breaks from her web of devotion to NY to seek stability)
  • You Can't Go Home Again (George Webber returns from Germany, resumes affair with Esther Jack, becomes writer, and is disillusioned by hometown)
• William Faulkner


  • Soldiers' Pay
  • The Reivers
  • Sanctuary (Popeye rapes Temple Drake with corn cob and takes her to a Memphis brothel, but she protest him and testifies against Lee Goodwin, defended by Horace Benbow, and Goodwin is l)
• Enfabled Rock

  Novel by Thomas Wolfe about his affair with scenic designer Mrs. Esther Jack, and his break from her devotion to New York to seek stability
• You Can't Go Home Again

  Novel by Thomas Wolfe about George Webber, who returns from Germany, resumes affair with Esther Jack, becomes a writer, and is disillusioned by his hometown
• Works by William Faulkner

  • Soldiers' Pay
  • The Reivers
  • Sanctuary
  • The Sound and the Fury
  • The Hamlet - The Town - The Mansion trilogy
  • Go Down Moses
  • Light in August
  • Absalom Absalom
  • As I Lay Dying
  • A Fable
  • Knight's Gambit
  • Requiem for a Nun
  • Intruder in the Dust
  • Sartoris
  • The Unvanquished
  • These Thirteen
• The Enormous Room


  Novel by E.E. Cummings about his imprisonment in a French concentration camp during WWI on a false treason charge
• Works by Norman Mailer

  • The Naked and the Dead
  • The Executioner's Song
  • An American Dream
  • Armies of the Night
• Tales of the South Pacific

  Novel by James Michener
• Works by John Hersey

  • A Bell for Adano
  • Hiroshima
• Works by J.D. Salinger

  • The Catcher in the Rye
  • Franny and Zooey
• Works by Joseph Heller

  • Catch-22
  • Something Happened
  • Good as Gold
• Works by Kurt Vonnegut

  • Slaughterhouse-Five or the Children's Crusade A Duty-Dance with Death
  • Cat's Cradle
  • Player Piano
• Stranger in a Strange Land

  Novel by Robert Heinlein about a Martian
• Giles Goat-Boy The New Revised Syllabus

  Novel by John Barth about computer WESAC's developer Max Spielman designating George Giles, who had been raised by goats and opposed by poet Harold Bray, as Our Great Tutor
• The Sot-Weed Factor

  Novel by John Barth about Ebenezer Cooke coming from England to take charge of a Maryland tobacco plantation called Malden
• All the King's Men

  Novel by Robert Penn Warren about Willie Stark, a character based on Huey Long, narrated by Jack Burden
• Works by O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)

  • The Four Million
  • The Last Leaf
  • A Retrieved Restoration
• Works by John Cheever

  • The Wapshot Chronicle
  • Falconer
• Works by John Updike

  • Rabbit Run
  • Rabbit is Rich
  • Rabbit at Rest
• Works by Ezra Pound

  • Pipostes
  • Cantos
  • Personae
• Works by Winston Churchill

  • The Crisis
  • Richard Carvel
• Works by Edwin Arlington Robinson


  • The Town Down the River
  • Miniver Cheevey
  • Richard Cory
  • The Man Against the Sky
• Works by Robert Frost

  • North of Boston
  • Stopping by Woods on Snowy Evening
  • The Road Not Taken
  • The Gift Outright
  • Fire and Ice
  • Mending Wall
  • A Boy's Will
  • Birches
  • The Death of the Hired Man
  • A Further Range
• Works by Edna St. Vincent Millay

  • Ballad of the Harp Weaver
  • A Few Figs from Thistles
• Paterson

  Poem by William Carlos Williams about the Passaic River in New Jersey
• In the American Grain

  Work by William Carlos Williams that studies figures like Columbus, Cortez, De Soto, Raleigh, Franklin, and others
• Works by Ray Bradbury

  • Something Wicked This Way Comes
  • Fahrenheit 451
  • The Martian Chronicles
• Death in the Family

  Novel by James Agee
• Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

  Work by James Agee about Alabama farmers in the Depression, with photographer Walker Evans
• Works by Zane Grey

  • Riders of the Purple Sage
  • The Last of the Plainsmen
  • Tales of Fishing