ENRICHMENT
American Literature Essentials playlist
The search for ‘the great American novel’ is both famous and ongoing (Google it). The list below contains most of the leading contenders, plus some other works. For American readers, and for students in American schools, these texts and writers are household names – and for good reason. They are some of the greatest works of literature written in English in the last 200 years. Although, strictly speaking, they’re American Literature and not English Literature, we would still recommend that you look up and read some of these texts. They’re all great in their own way.
American Literature Essentials
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868)
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1920)
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) - recommended read
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (1937)
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (1939)
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (1947)
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (1951) - recommended read
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952)
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin (1953)
On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963)
Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987) - recommended read
The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)