THE LIBRARY OF AMERICA
The Library of America, a nonprofit publisher and educational outreach entity, was founded in 1979 with grants from the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Although its mission was a well-grounded and no-nonsense business approach to publishing, it essentially was fulfilling a long-held dream by the great critic Edmund Wilson and others. The United States of America, they felt, ought to have a publications series of high standards and high quality of production for its national literature, and it ought to reflect the diversity and traditions of all of its writing.
The first books appeared in 1982, when I first began selling new books in an independent book store here in Carlisle. (The founding of Whistlestop Bookshop was three years away.) I still have my copies of Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman. I won’t tell you how many of the 300+ to date I have acquired, but I am happy to say I never regretted one. The books are remarkably beautiful and efficient and scholarly and finely-made. They are sometimes the only respectable edition available (beware of photo-offset print-on-demand editions!). The accompanying chronologies and notes and textual discussions of every volume are a joy and an education. I cannot praise them too highly.
This listing is what I carry in the store. If you would like other volumes, send me an e-mail or call the store. Enjoy browsing, buying, and owning landmark definitive editions of great writers or great American subjects.
The listings are alphabetical by author except for new or recent anthologies at the top. Older anthologies are at the bottom of the page.
American Christmas Stories
American Christmas Stories
Library of America and Connie Willis present 150 years of diverse, ingenious, and uniquely American Christmas stories
Christmas took on its modern cast in America, and over the last 150 years the most magical time of the year has inspired scores of astonishingly diverse and ingenious stories. Library of America joins with acclaimed author Connie Willis to present a unparalleled collection of American stories about Christmas, literary gems that showcase how the holiday became one of the signature aspects of our culture.
Spanning from the origins of the American tradition of holiday storytelling in the wake of the Civil War to today, this is the biggest and best anthology of American Christmas stories ever assembled. From ghost stories to the genres of crime, science fiction, fantasy, westerns, humor, and horror, stories of Christmas morning, gifts, wise men, nativities, family, commercialism, and dinners from New York to Texas to outer space, this anthology reveals the evolution of Christmas in America–as well as the surprising ways in which it has remained the same.
Table of Contents:
Introduction by Connie Willis
Bret Harte, How Santa Claus Came to Simpson’s Bar
Louisa May Alcott, Kate’s Choice
Mark Twain, A Letter from Santa Claus
J. B. Moore Bristor, Found After Thirty-Five Years—Lucy Marshall’s Letter
Mary Agnes Tincker, From the Garden of a Friend
William Dean Howells, Christmas Every Day
John Kendrick Bangs, Thurlow’s Christmas Story
Jack London, Klondike Christmas
Stephen Crane, A Little Pilgrim
Paul Laurence Dunbar, An Old-Time Christmas
Pauline E. Hopkins, General Washington
Jacob Riis, The Kid Hangs Up His Stocking
George Ade, The Set of Poe
O. Henry, A Chaparral Christmas Gift
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, According to Solomon
Edward Lucas White, The Picture Puzzle
Margaret Black, A Christmas Party That Prevented a Split in the Church
Dorothy Parker, The Christmas Magazines: And the Inevitable Story of the Snowbound Train
Robert Benchley, Christmas Afternoon
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Sermon in the Cradle
Ben Hecht, Holiday Thoughts
Heywood Broun, Bethlehem, Dec. 25
Christopher Morley, The Tree That Didn’t Get Trimmed
Sherwood Anderson, A Criminal’s Christmas
James Thurber, A Visit from Saint Nicholas
Langston Hughes, One Christmas Eve
Damon Runyon, The Three Wise Guys
Leo Rosten, Mr. K*A*P*L*A*N and the Magi
John Henrik Clarke, Santa Claus is a White Man
John Collier, Back for Christmas
Edna Ferber, No Room at the Inn
John McNulty, Two People He Never Saw
Mary Roberts Rinehart, The Butler’s Christmas Eve
Katherine Anne Porter, A Christmas Story
Abelardo Díaz Alfaro, “Santa Clo” Comes to La Cuchilla
Ray Bradbury, The Gift
Raymond E. Banks, Christmas Trombone
Mildred Clingerman, The Wild Wood
Shirley Jackson, from Raising Demons
Grace Paley, The Loudest Voice
Mari Sandoz, The Christmas of the Phonograph Records
Joan Didion, The Big Rock Candy Figgy Pudding Pitfall
John Updike, The Carol Sing
Tomás Rivera, The Night Before Christmas
Thomas M. Disch, The Santa Claus Compromise
Pete Hamill, The Christmas Kid
Gene Wolfe, The War Beneath the Tree
Cynthia Felice, Track of a Legend
Ed McBain, And All Through the House
George V. Higgins, The Impossible Snowsuit of Christmas Past
Ron Carlson, The H Street Sledding Record
Steve Rasnic Tem, Buzz
Amy Tan, Fish Cheeks
Ann Petry, Checkup
Sandra Cisneros, Three Wise Guys
Connie Willis, Inn
José R. Nieto, Ixchel’s Tears
Nathan Englander, Reb Kringle
Nalo Hopkinson, A Young Candy Daughter