Best of
American

1884

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn


Mark Twain - 1884
    It is a dreamlike summertime world of hooky and adventure, pranks and punishment, villains and first love, filled with memorable characters. Adults and young readers alike continue to enjoy this delightful classic of the promise and dreams of youth from one of America’s most beloved authors. ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINNHe has no mother, his father is a brutal drunkard, and he sleeps in a barrel. He’s Huck Finn—liar, sometime thief, and rebel against respectability. But when Huck meets a runaway slave named Jim, his life changes forever. On their exciting flight down the Mississippi aboard a raft, the boy nobody wanted matures into a young man of courage and conviction. As Ernest Hemingway said of this glorious novel, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.”--back cover

Complete Stories 1874–1884


Henry James - 1884
    Stories collected in this Library of America volume (the second of five volumes of James’s stories) show James working out, in a more concise fictional laboratory, themes that appear in such novels of the period as The Portrait of a Lady and The Bostonians. They include some of his most famous explorations of the international theme: “Daisy Miller,” the unforgettable portrayal of an innocent, headstrong American girl at odds with European mores, “An International Episode” and “Lady Barberina,” satirically probing tales of English aristocrats and the American marriage market, and “The Siege of London,” in which an American widow strives to work her way into English society.In “A Bundle of Letters” and “The Point of View,” James makes a fascinating experimental use of the epistolary form. “Professor Fargo” presents an unusually bleak view of the darker side of American life, while “The Author of ‘Beltraffio’” offers a disturbing portrait of a fin-de-siècle novelist. Throughout, James wittily limns the demands and hidden struggles of social life, and hones his mastery of the unexpected resolution and the brilliantly framed moral portrait.Adventurous in narrative technique, yet marked by precise observation rendered in quicksilver prose, the stories of James’s middle period present a breathtaking array of memorable characters and beguiling scenarios.

Round the World


Andrew Carnegie - 1884
    Go, therefore, my friends-all you who are so situated as to be able to avail yourselves of this privilege-go and see for yourselves how greatly we are bound by prejudices... -from Round the World What a joy! As an adventurous travelogue, it is delightfully entertaining; as a journal of the development of the progressive philosophy of one of America's greatest philanthropists, it is stunning in its insights and its outlook. In October 1878, Andrew Carnegie and his friend John Vandervort set off on a mad cross-continental dash by train from New York to San Francisco to catch a ship sailing to Japan; by the time they ended their voyages around the globe with an uneventful sail home from London in May 1879, Carnegie-as both a businessman and a social benefactor--had been profoundly influenced by the cultures he'd explored and peoples he'd met. Originally intended for private circulation and later published in 1884, this is an intimate and provocative work of tremendous historical and cultural value. Also available from Cosimo Classics: Carnegie's Triumphant Democracy, An American Four-in-Hand in Britain, and Autobiography. Entrepreneur and philanthropist ANDREW CARNEGIE (1835-1919) was born in Scotland and emigrated to America as a teenager. His Carnegie Steel Company launched the steel industry in Pittsburgh, and after its sale to J.P. Morgan, he devoted his life to philanthropic causes. His charitable organizations built more than 2,500 public libraries around the world, and gave away more than $350 million during his lifetime."

The Hessians and the Other German Auxiliaries of Great Britain in the Revolutionary War


Edward Jackson Lowell - 1884
    This version of Lowell’s The Hessians and Other German Auxiliaries of Great Britain in the Revolutionary War includes a table of contents.