An unprecedented historical and literary event, this tale written in the 1850s is the only known novel by a female African American slave, and quite possibly the first novel written by a black woman anywhere. A work recently uncovered by renowned scholar and professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., it is a stirring tale of "passing" and the adventures of a young slave as she makes her way to freedom.

Clotel; or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States is an 1853 novel by the author and playwright William Wells Brown. Set in the early 19th century, it is the story of Clotel and her sister Althesa, who are fictional slave daughters of Thomas Jefferson. It is considered the first novel published by an African American and explores the destructive effects of slavery on African American families, the difficult lives of mixed-race people, and the degraded and immoral condition of the relationship between master and slave. 

The poems of Leaves of Grass are loosely connected, with each representing Whitman's celebration of his philosophy of life and humanity. This book is notable for its discussion of delight in sensual pleasures during a time when such candid displays were considered immoral. Where much previous poetry, especially English, relied on symbolism, allegory, and meditation on the religious and spiritual, Leaves of Grass exalted the body and the material world.

Travelling in Europe with her family, Daisy Miller, an exquisitely beautiful young American woman, presents her fellow countryman Winterbourne with a dilemma he cannot resolve. Is she deliberately flouting social convention in the outspoken way she talks and acts, or is she simply ignorant of those conventions? When she strikes up an intimate friendship with an urbane young Italian, her flat refusal to observe the codes of respectable behaviour leave her perilously exposed.

The Turn of the Screw is an 1898 horror novella by Henry James which first appeared in serial format in Collier's Weekly. In October 1898, it was collected in The Two Magics, published by Macmillan in New York City and Heinemann in London.