The Authors

The works you are about to read were written between 1799 and 1910.

A note on the texts: “[date]” following the title of the story depicts the earliest or original date of publication (with a number of these stories, the version you are reading was published even decades later than the original, and there may have be minor changes to the text since). The date following the author’s name is the publication date for the version of the story you are reading. 

Below is a map of the United States of America in 1852, showing where each author featured in this collection was born and/or raised. The territorial borders drawn by settlers here are, of course, barely recognizable as maps of the US we see today. The country was constantly in a state of change, and this change was typically violent. 

**NOTE: much of the information is linked to Wikipedia simply due to copyright reasons for this compilation; please do not rely solely on Wikipedia for your own research.