50 Quintessentially American Novels via Accredited Online Colleges

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Literature is just as subjective a creative pursuit as any other. Sure there’s some technique involved in executing a practically perfect piece, but just as many startlingly amazing subversions exist as well. So don’t take this list as anything beyond one writer’s opinion. Heightened blood pressure over what books have and have not been included is more than a wee bit silly. All the novels featured here cover the dual nature of American culture, politics, history, acculturation and more. From a diverse selection of perspectives, they analyze some corner of this supposed “Dream” that everyone in the nation is supposed to share – particularly how it means something different to different people and doesn’t always play out as expected. Though many of these vivisect highly familiar (if not universal) themes and archetypes, they couldn’t have been written anywhere else.

1.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe: This impassioned anti-slavery novel helped stimulate the Abolitionist movement and further drive wedges between the American North and South, making it one of the most culturally significant fictitious works in the nation’s literary canon.

2.
Little Women (1868-1869) by Louisa May Alcott: Read about the now-classic lives of four fictional sisters and their mother as they wait and pray for their father, almost perpetually away from their New England home serving as a Union chaplain.

3.
Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain: One of the most revered American novels painstakingly satirizes prevailing attitudes about slavery, childhood and humanity, all while bringing the Mighty Mississippi and Deep South to vivid, sweltering life.

4.
The Red Badge of Courage (1895) by Stephen Crane: Witness the Civil War through the eyes of a traumatized young man whose heroism comes at a painfully exorbitant cost — and not just his idealization of battle, either.

5.
The Awakening (1899) by Kate Chopin: While not explicitly feminist, many women’s studies scholars and literary critics see this novel as one of the many precursors to the movement. Here, American (though not uniquely so) social mores drive a Southern woman to challenge her forced status.

6.
The Jungle (1906) by Upton Sinclair: Everyone emphasizes the horrifying food standards present in Upton Sinclair’s muckraking tome — especially since it directly inspired legislation — but the author actually intended it as a treatise on the plight of exploited American laborers (particularly immigrants).

7.
Three Lives (1909) by Gertrude Stein: Influential modernist Gertrude Stein burst onto the literary scene with the story of three women (all of whom live in the same fictional city of Bridgeport) whose experiences in the United States vastly differ as a result of their racial, gender and economic statuses and overall health.

8.
The Rise of David Levinsky (1917) by Abraham Cahan: The eponymous hero comes of age in Russia, but transplants himself to America as a young man, meeting with the unique struggles frequently faced by the country’s immigrant population.

9.
My Antonia (1918) by Willa Cather: On the plains of Nebraska, a young man comes of age and befriends some lively Bohemian immigrants hoping to transcend their humble beginnings and achieve American Dreams of their own.

10.
The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald: The celebrated American author channels the myriad hypocrisies and flamboyant decadence of the Jazz Age into an enduring, dramatic classic.

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