The Literature of the United States: Voices of the Nineteenth Century surveys the literary movements of the United States from its origins up to the twentieth century through a selection of texts which includes poetry, short fiction, and novels written by men and women of different ethnic backgrounds, social classes and geographical areas. Among these authors, the book analyzes representatives pieces by Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. This book includes suggestions for further research through a general bibliography and online resources, as well as through a number of open questions that suggest connections between the texts with the aim of providing an overview of the richness and variety of nineteenth-century literature.