better known by his pen name of Mark Twain, grew up in the Mississippi River frontier town of Hannibal, Missouri and his style is vigorous, realistic, colloquial American speech, gave American writers a new appreciation of their national voice.

Has inspired countless literary interpretations. The novel is a story of death, rebirth, and initiation. It is Jim's adventures that initiate Huck into the complexities of human nature and give him moral courage

Is remembered as a local colorist and author of adventurous stories such as The Luck of Roaring Camp and The Outcasts of Poker Flat set along the western mining frontier.

Is noted for his "international theme" which is the complex relationships between naive Americans and cosmopolitan Europeans, which he explored in the novels The American, Daisy Miller, and a masterpiece, The Portrait of a Lady.

Descended from a wealthy family in New York society and saw firsthand the decline of this cultivated group and, in her view, the rise of boorish, nouveau-riche business families. This social transformation is the background of many of her novels.

Was a journalist who also wrote fiction, essays, poetry, and plays, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is one of his best naturalistic American novels.

It is the harrowing story of a poor, sensitive young girl whose alcoholic parents utterly fail her. In love and eager to escape her violent home life, she allows herself to be seduced into living with a young man, who soon deserts her.

Is a naturalist who set his collection of stories, The Son of the Wolf in the Klondike region of Alaska and the Canadian Yukon. His best-sellers The Call of the Wild and The Sea Wolf made him the highest-paid writer in the United States of his time.

Explores the dangers of the American dream in his 1925 work An American Tragedy, The novel relates, in great detail, the life of Clyde Griffiths, who grows up in great poverty in a family of wandering evangelists, but dreams of wealth and the love of beautiful women

Reflects the dissatisfaction, envy, and despair that afflicted many poor and working people in America's competitive, success-driven society.

It used eye-catching journalistic techniques to depict harsh working conditions and oppression.

During her lifetime she became increasingly alienated from the materialism of modern life and wrote of alternative visions in the American Southwest and the past.

It evokes the idealism of two 16th-century priests establishing the Catholic Church in the New Mexican desert.

He was a poet, historian, biographer, novelist, musician, essayist, but a journalist by profession. To many, Sandburg was a latter-day Walt Whitman, writing expansive, evocative urban and patriotic poems and simple, childlike rhymes and ballads.

Is the best U.S. poet of the late 19th century and some of the best known of Robinson's dramatic monologues are Luke Havergal, about a forsaken lover; Miniver Cheevy, a portrait of a romantic dreamer; and Richard Cory, a somber portrait of a wealthy man who commits suicide.

His best works include The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, two modernist works experimenting with viewpoint and voice to probe southern families under the stress of losing a family member.

Was one of the most influential American poets of this century. His poetry is best known for its clear, visual images, fresh rhythms, and muscular, intelligent, unusual lines, such as the ones inspired by Japanese haiku - "In a Station of the Metro" (1916).

He wrote influential essays and dramas and championed the importance of literary and social traditions for the modern poet. As a critic, Eliot is best remembered for his formulation of the "objective correlative," as a means of expressing emotion through "a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events" that would be the "formula" of that particular emotion.

Known for his combined sound and sense in his frequent use of rhyme and images and his poems are often deceptively simple but suggest a deeper meaning.

His works dwell upon themes of the imagination, the necessity for aesthetic form, and the belief that the order of art corresponds with an order in nature. His vocabulary is rich and varied: He paints lush tropical scenes but also manages dry, humorous, and ironic vignettes.

Championed the use of colloquial speech, His sympathy for ordinary working people, children, and everyday events in modern urban settings make his poetry attractive and accessible.

Refers to a group of American writers who became popular in the 1950s and who popularized the “Beatniks" culture.

Embraced African-American jazz rhythms in his works and was one of the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance responsible for the flowering of African American culture and writings.

Is known for novels whose protagonists are disillusioned by the great American dream.

He received the Nobel Prize in 1954 for his The Old Man and the Sea a short poetic novel about a poor, old fisherman who heroically catches a huge fish devoured by sharks this won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 27.

He worked as a newspaper journalist before becoming an acclaimed novelist. Known for their satirical take on modern affairs, his best-known books include Main Street, Arrowsmith, Babbitt, and Dodsworth.

American novelist, best known for The Grapes of Wrath (1939), which summed up the bitterness of the Great Depression decade and aroused widespread sympathy for the plight of migratory farmworkers.

Was an American writer whose best-known works, including the poems “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus” and the novel The Bell Jar, starkly express a sense of alienation and self-destruction that has resonated with many readers since the mid-20th century

Novelist and short-story writer who was among the first African American writers to protest white treatment of Blacks, notably in his novel Native Son (1940) and his autobiography, Black Boy (1945).

Commonly known as e.e. cummings, wrote innovative verse distinguished for its humor, grace, celebration of love and eroticism, and experimentation with punctuation and visual format on the page.

Was a world-renowned writer and anthropologist. Hurston's novels, short stories, and plays often depicted African American life in the South. Her work in anthropology examined black folklore.

Today considered one of the greatest American playwrights of the 20th century. As one of the first writers to think of the stage and plays as literature, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936 and won the Pulitzer Prize four times in his career.

A pivotal figure in the literary history of the twentieth century He is the only writer to win Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and drama and received the Pulitzer for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) and the plays Our Town (1938) and The Skin of Our Teeth (1942).

American playwright, who combined social awareness with a searching concern for his characters' inner lives. He is best known for Death of a Salesman (1949).

American dramatist whose plays reveal a world of human frustration in which sex and violence underlie an atmosphere of romantic gentility.

Written by F. Scott Fitzgerald talks of a young psychiatrist whose life is doomed by his marriage to an unstable woman

Written by F. Scott Fitzgerald explores the self-destructive extravagance of his times.

Focuses on the story of Jay Gatsby who discovers the devastating cost of success in terms of personal fulfillment and love.

Is known for his highly acclaimed book The Invisible Man (1952) which is a story of a black man who lives a subterranean existence in a hole brightly illuminated by electricity stolen from a utility company. The book recounts his grotesque, disenchanting experiences.

She created fiction organized around a single narrator telling the story from a consistent point of view. Her first success, the story Flowering Judas, was set in Mexico during the revolution.

Modeled after Katherine Ann Porter, but she is more interested in the comic and grotesque characters like the stubborn daughter in her short story Why I Work at the P.O., who moves out of her house to live in a tiny post office.

He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976. Bellow's Seize the Day is a brilliant novella noted for its brevity. It centers on a failed businessman, Tommy Wilhelm, who tries to hide his feelings of inadequacy by presenting a good front. Seize the Day sums up the fear of failure that plagues many Americans.

He achieved huge literary success with the publication of his novel The Catcher in the Rye (1951). • The novel centers on a sensitive 16-year-old, Holden Caulfield, who flees his elite boarding school for the outside world of adulthood, only to become disillusioned by its materialism and phoniness.

His best-known novel, On the Road, describes "beatniks" wandering through America seeking an idealistic dream of communal life and beauty.

It focuses on counterculture intellectuals and their infatuation with Zen Buddhism.

Is more interested in how a story is told than in the story itself. Barth entices his audience into a carnival fun-house full of distorting mirrors that exaggerate some features while minimizing others. Many of his earlier works were existential.

Was a novelist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director. He is considered an innovator of narrative nonfiction called New Journalism in Miami and the Siege of Chicago. He is also famous for The Executioner's Song, Ancient Evenings, and Harlot's Ghost.

He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 for her skillful rendition of the complex identities of black people in a universal manner. Some of her novels include The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, and Beloved.

Is an African American who uses lyrical realism in her epistolary dialect novel The Color Purple where she exposes social problems and racial issues.

She wrote I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970) which celebrates the mother-daughter connection