Memorize these and you could recognize 29.6% of all American Literature clues.
| # | Answer | Appearances | Sample Clue |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | James Fenimore Cooper | 16 | This "Deerslayer" author's first book, "Precaution", was written on a dare from his wife |
| 2 | Ernest Hemingway | 14 | This author's son Jack wrote "Misadventures of a Fly Fisherman: My Life With & Without Papa." |
| 3 | Nathaniel Hawthorne | 13 | He penned a campaign biography for Franklin Pierce and pinned "The Scarlet Letter" on Hester Prynne |
| 4 | Edgar Allan Poe | 12 | C. Auguste Dupin is an amateur detective who appears in 3 of his short stories |
| 5 | Jack London | 10 | Adventuresome as his novels, he spent freely sailing the South Seas & building his home, "Wolf House" |
| 6 | Mark Twain | 9 | He wrote that "persons attempting to find a plot" in "Huck Finn" "will be shot" |
| 7 | Faulkner | 9 | From 1922-1924 he was Postmaster of the University of Mississippi |
| 8 | Herman Melville | 9 | His bestselling first novel, published in 1846, was set in Polynesia |
| 9 | Sinclair Lewis | 8 | Because it depicted a religious figure's sexuality, his "Elmer Gantry" was banned in Boston in 1927 |
| 10 | Washington Irving | 7 | 1st American writer to achieve internat'l fame, he spent nearly 20 years writing, not sleeping, in Europe |
| 11 | F. Scott Fitzgerald | 7 | "The victor belongs to the spoils," he claimed in "The Beautiful & the Damned" |
| 12 | John Steinbeck | 7 | The only native Californian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature |
| 13 | Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | 7 | New England poet who is only American honored in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner |
| 14 | Louisa May Alcott | 7 | "Jo's Boys" was her last novel in the saga of Jo March |
| 15 | Willa Cather | 6 | Her fascination with the SW & the Catholic Church is demonstrated in "Death Comes for the Archbishop" |
| 16 | Uncle Tom's Cabin | 6 | 19th century novel whose alternate title is "Life Among the Lowly" |
| 17 | Henry James | 6 | This American who moved to Europe wrote about Americans in Europe in "The Ambassadors" |
| 18 | Stephen Crane | 6 | He died at age 28, just 5 years after his Civil War novel was published |
| 19 | The Great Gatsby | 5 | One of the original titles of this 1925 novel was "Among Ash Heaps and Millionaires" |
| 20 | Larry McMurtry | 5 | He wrote "Cadillac Jack" & "Lonesome Dove" after "Terms of Endearment" |
| 21 | Harriet Beecher Stowe | 5 | Her 2nd antislavery book was 1856's "Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp" |
| 22 | Thoreau | 5 | Urged to make his peace with God, this "Walden" author replied, "I did not know we had ever quarreled" |
| 23 | William Styron | 4 | This "Sophie's Choice" author set his 1st novel, "Lie Down in Darkness", in his native Virginia |
| 24 | Truman Capote | 4 | "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered" was 1 of this author's favorite quotes |
| 25 | The Sun Also Rises | 4 | Characters in this Hemingway novel include Jake Barnes, Lady Brett Ashley & Pedro Romero, a bullfighter |
| 26 | Sister Carrie | 4 | T. Dreiser novel that went undistributed for 12 years since publisher's wife opposed its amoral heroine |
| 27 | L. Frank Baum | 4 | He wrote that in Oz he eliminated the stereotyped genie, dwarf & fairy of old-time tales |
| 28 | Gertrude Stein | 4 | She studied psychology with William James at Radcliffe before she founded the "Lost Generation" |
| 29 | Carson McCullers | 4 | She published “The Member of the Wedding” as a novel in 1946, then rewrote it as a play in 1950 |
| 30 | Walt Whitman | 4 | He wrote several anonymous reviews praising the genius of his own "Leaves of Grass" |
| 31 | Theodore Dreiser | 4 | Like the hero of his novel "An American Tragedy", this author grew up in poverty |
| 32 | Winesburg, Ohio | 3 | This collection of short stories about life in a small town was S. Anderson's 4th book |
| 33 | The Red Badge of Courage | 3 | This novel by Stephen Crane is subtitled "An Episode of the American Civil War" |
| 34 | The Natural | 3 | This 1952 work about baseball player Roy Hobbs was Bernard Malamud's first novel |
| 35 | the Civil War | 3 | "Little Women" is set during this war |
| 36 | Moby-Dick | 3 | In 1851 this Herman Melville classic was first published in England as "The Whale" |
| 37 | Kurt Vonnegut | 3 | "Hocus Pocus" was a 1990 book by this "Cat's Cradle" novelist |
| 38 | Joyce Carol Oates | 3 | The 1985 movie "Smooth Talk" was based on her short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" |
| 39 | Joseph Heller | 3 | His experiences as a bombardier in WWII were the basis of the novel "Catch-22" |
| 40 | John Dos Passos | 3 | His 2nd & lesser-known trilogy was called "District of Columbia" |
| 41 | Edna Ferber | 3 | She won a Pulitzer Prize for "So Big" but not for "Cimarron" |
| 42 | Edgar Rice Burroughs | 3 | At 66, this Tarzan creator was the oldest correspondent in the South Pacific during WWII |
| 43 | Cormac McCarthy | 3 | Time put his violent western tale "Blood Meridian" on a list of the 100 best novels since 1923 |
| 44 | A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court | 3 | The Mark Twain novel that feature Merlin & Morgan le Fay |
| 45 | John Updike | 3 | This author of "The Witches of Eastwick" once worked as a staff writer for The New Yorker |
| 46 | Daniel Webster | 3 | In a Stephen Vincent Benét short story this New Englander saves Jabez Stone from "Mr. Scratch" |
| 47 | Buck | 3 | "Sons", the second novel in her "House of Earth" trilogy, traces the lives of Wang Lung's 3 sons |
| 48 | (James) Baldwin | 3 | His 1st novel, "Go Tell It On The Mountain", was based on his early childhood in Harlem |
| 49 | Zane Grey | 2 | New York City dentist whose "Riders of the Purple Sage" made him a popular Western novelist |
| 50 | William Kennedy | 2 | With Francis Ford Coppola, this "Ironweed" author wrote the screenplay for "The Cotton Club" |