Library of America

The Library of America (LOA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature. Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LOA has published more than 300 volumes by authors ranging from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Saul Bellow, Frederick Douglass to Ursula K. Le Guin, including selected writing of several U.S. presidents. Anthologies and works containing historical documents, criticism, and journalism are also published. Library of America volumes seek to print authoritative versions of works; include extensive notes, chronologies, and other back matter; and are known for their distinctive physical appearance and characteristics.

Overview and history

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Entrance to the Library of America offices, 14 East 60th Street, New York

The Bibliothèque de la Pléiade ("La Pléiade") series published in France provided the model for the LOA, which was long a dream of critic and author Edmund Wilson. During the 1960s and 1970s, there was a long saga of rival literary outfits attempting to assemble and finding funding for much the same thing.

The founding of the Library of America took place in 1979, with the creation of an entity known as Literary Classics of the United States, Inc. (This remains the entity under which LOA notes, chronologies, and other auxiliary materials are copyrighted; and, officially, employees work for Literary Classics of the United States, Inc.) Publishers associated in some way with the creation include Lawrence Hughes, Helen Honig Meyer, and Roger W. Straus Jr. The initial board of advisers included Robert Penn Warren, C. Vann Woodward, R. W. B. Lewis, Robert Coles, Irving Howe, and Eudora Welty. Funding at the start came from two sources, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, in the total amount of $1.8 million.

The initial president of the new entity was the American academic Daniel Aaron, who had been a friend of Wilson's since the 1950s. The executive director was Cheryl Hurley, who had worked at the Modern Language Association. Other founding officers included the literary critic Richard Poirier, as vice president, and the publisher Jason Epstein, as treasurer. Epstein, and later Aaron and Poirier, had all been involved in the long series of proposals and discussions that led up to the creation of the Library of America. Another founder was the textual scholar G. Thomas Tanselle; he too had been involved in the discussions prior to creation, and after that he chaired the committee that was the arbiter of LOA textual policy.

"Its black dust jackets with an image of the author and a simple red, white, and blue stripe running below the author's name, rendered in a fountain-pen-like hand, help give the clothbound volumes a timeless feel"

—David Skinner, Humanities, 2015

Aaron remained in his position until 1985, and was responsible for navigating the shoals between the orthodoxies of literary criticism and a wider view of what the Library of America could publish. He was followed as president by executive director Hurley. In 2017, she retired as president and was replaced by Max Rudin, who was already the entity's publisher.

Hanna M. "Gila" Bercovitch served as founding editor, senior editor, and then editor-in-chief until her death in 1997. Upon her passing, Henry Louis Gates said that "It is hard to find anyone who has been more central to institutionalizing the canon of American literature." She was followed as editor-in-chief by the poet and critic Geoffrey O'Brien. He retired in 2017, and was followed in 2018 by John Kulka, who was given the title of editorial director.

The first volumes were published in 1982, ten years after Wilson's death. They were priced moderately. The launch was accompanied by considerable amounts of publicity. Public response was in terms of sales positive from the beginning; by 1986, the non-profit was breaking even, although it accepted special grants for specific projects, such as one from the Bradley Foundation to enable the two-volume The Debate on the Constitution set. The response to the series continued to grow over time; between 1993 and 1996, the publisher's frontlist sales doubled. By 1996, the Library of America was getting two-thirds of its sales via subscription programs and one-third through bookstores. While for a long time the series only published the works of authors who had passed on, this changed in the late 1990s when Eudora Welty was published, soon to be followed by Philip Roth. Similarly, the rule that authors had to be American-born was later relaxed when Vladimir Nabokov was added to the list. While a nonprofit entity, the Library has not been immune to commercial considerations, often going further into genre works such as detective fiction and science fiction than some of its founders would have imagined.

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Library of America exhibit booth at MLA convention Chicago December 2007

Besides the works of many individual writers, the series includes anthologies such as (in a different format from the above illustration) Writing Los Angeles. The Library of America introduced coverage of American journalism with the 1995 two-volume set Reporting World War II, which not only garnered positive reviews, but soon became one of the publisher's five best-selling offerings to that point, the others being volumes about Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Walt Whitman. That those others all concerned the Civil War era was did not go unnoticed; one of the publisher's most ambitious later efforts, a multi-volume collection of first-person narratives, revolved around the same topic, as did such volumes as a collection of letters that Grant wrote to his wife Julia.

The publisher aims to keep classics and notable historical and genre works in print permanently to preserve America's literary and cultural heritage. Previously, often only the best-known works of an author remained in print, as exemplified by Stephen Crane, whose novels and short stories were but whose poetry and journalism were not. As LOA chief executive Cheryl Hurley stated in 2001, "We're not only a publisher, we're a cultural institution." Although the LOA sells more than a quarter-million volumes annually, with the original seed money having run out, the publisher depends on individual contributions to help meet the costs of preparing, marketing, manufacturing, and maintaining its books. In one large form of donation, as of 2001 a $50,000 contribution could sponsor a particular book being kept in print. Some books published as additions to the series are not kept in print in perpetuity.

Research and scholarship

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Max Rudin, publisher of the Library of America, speaking at a 2015 Greenwich Village event that unveiled a plaque at a building where author James Baldwin lived

Library of America volumes are prepared and edited by recognized scholars on the subject. Notes on the text are normally included and the source texts identified; these notes have been called "fascinating in themselves". This is part of the extensive back matter typically included with each volume, behind which large amounts of research and scholarship are conducted.

Efforts are made to correct errors and omissions in previous editions and create a definitive version of the material. For instance, under the guidance of Bercovitch, the LOA text of Richard Wright's Native Son restored a number of passages that had been previously cut to make the work more palatable to the Book-of-the-Month Club. The LOA also commissioned a new translation of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America by Arthur Goldhammer for their edition of the text. Library of America volumes of letters tend to be representative rather than exhaustive in terms of inclusion criteria.

Unlike some other series such as the Norton Critical Editions, Library of America volumes provide no introductory essays or critical examinations of the work involved. This is per Wilson's original design. At times this omission can lead to frustration based on the inability to know the basis upon which material for a volume was selected.

Each volume also includes a chronology of the author's career or significant incidents in the case of the anthology volumes. Indeed, Library of America volumes are noted for their chronologies; The New York Times has called them "predictably superb". The author and journalist Gloria Emerson's review of the Reporting World War II volumes notes that they include "an excellent chronology of the war". The poet and literary critic Stephen Yenser, in reviewing of volume about the work of the poet Elizabeth Bishop, noted that the chronology was "so packed with pertinent details it amounts to a mini-biography". The notes and chronologies are often put together by LOA staff members and in some cases have informed the perspective of the guest editors working on the volume in question. LOA staff have also sometimes helped scholars working on related projects.

Critical reception

"The Library of America is well-known for its compact primary source collections with their minimalist black covers. These collections have long been a trusty resource for historians, writers, and anyone else interested in a variety of historical and literary eras, especially the American founding and early republic."

—Jeffrey J. Malanson, History: Reviews of New Books, 2017

The Library of America has received considerable praise for its endeavors. After the initial series were published, the critic Charles Champlin wrote that "The volumes in the series are in fact marvels of scholarship, unobtrusively displayed, and a prime effort has been to work from the text that reflects the author's final word." The aforementioned poet and critic Stephen Yenser has called the Library of America "invaluable"; that same term has been used to describe Library of America by the Cox News Service, by the Los Angeles Times, and by a book prize committee.

Newsweek magazine said in 2010 that "For three decades, the LOA has done a splendid job of making good on" its initial goals. Writing for the New York Times Book Review, the essayist and teacher William Deresiewicz has referred to the Library of America as "our quasi-official national canon". Indeed, whether an American writer has achieved a level of greatness is sometimes associated with whether they have the imprimatur of the Library of America. Writing for The Sewanee Review, the academic Michael Gorra has said that "the Library has shaped and indeed expanded our sense of what counts as American literature ... what makes the Library of America so valuable is the risks it takes around the edges of what used to be American literature".

The Library of America has attracted a number of criticisms as well, including accusations of selection biases in favor of literary and political trends and the questionable inclusion of certain writers ostensibly non-canonical. An offshoot series put out in 1989 by Vintage Books that was associated with the Library of America name was faulted as overly commercial and exploitative. Even the marketing for the main series has been reproved as overbearing, in that it exaggerated the degree to which the preservation of American literature was in peril and the degree to which the Library of America was saving it.

The LOA has been satirized by the essayist Arthur Krystal as "confer[ing] value on writers by encasing their work in handsome black-jacketed covers with a stripe of red, white, and blue on the spine." The oft-perceived requirement that writers have passed from the scene led to one wry comment that "one sympathizes with the directors of a publishing venture increasingly dependent on the idea that great American writers just can't die fast enough." The series even prompted a mocking poem that began:

It's like heaven: you've got to die
To get there. And you can't be sure.
The publisher might go out of business.

In an April Fools' Day swipe at the Library of America's selection standards, another satirical piece proclaimed that the LOA "would publish volumes of Paris Hilton's and William Shatner's memoirs, and possibly those of Jersey ShoreTemplate:'s Snooki." Images of the faux volumes were included.

In his 2001 book Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future, LOA co-founder Jason Epstein, who by his own account had lost out in an internal power struggle and departed the venture, sharply criticized the Library of America's finances and what he saw as the publication of unnecessary anthologies and authors whose qualifications for the series were suspect. He concluded:

The Library of America has now published substantially all the work for which it was created and for which rights are available. Its obligation hereafter is to husband its resources so that this work remains in print and accessible to readers, and to ensure that funds are on hand for the publication of twentieth-century writers as rights permit.

What Edmund Wilson would think of the series as it has evolved is unknowable, but writing for The Antioch Review in 1986, the fellow Paul M. Wright ventures that "We might reasonably infer that he would be pleased but not, I think, entirely pleased." Less reservedly, the editor and commentator Norman Podhoretz, writing for Commentary in 1992, said that "the Library of America is as close to the kind of thing [Wilson] envisaged as it could conceivably be."

Build and manufacture

The designer of the appearance of Library of America books is Bruce Campbell. When the first LOA volumes appeared in 1982, the "Book Design & Manufacturing" column of Publishers Weekly headlined that the series's physical appearance was "a triumph of the bookmaker's art".

The LOA uses paper that meets guidelines for permanence originally set out by a committee of the Council on Library Resources and subsequently by the American National Standards Institute. Each volume is printed on thin but opaque acid-free paper, allowing books ranging from 700 to 1,600 pages to remain fairly compact (although not as small as those in La Pléiade). The paper used means the books will last a very long time without crumbling or yellowing. All volumes in the main series have the same trim size, by , dimensions that are based on the golden section. The weight of each volume is around .

For the hardcover editions, the binding cloth is woven rayon, and the books are Smyth-sewn. Each includes a ribbon bookmark. Pages in the books will lie flat when open. The uniform typeface is Galliard.

The LOA publishes selected titles in paperback, mainly for the college textbook market.

Main series

#	Author	Title	Editor(s)	Year	ISBN
1		Typee, Omoo, Mardi		1982
2		Tales and Sketches		1982
3		Poetry and Prose		1982
4		Three Novels		1982
5		Mississippi Writings		1982
6		Novels and Stories		1982
7		Novels and Social Writings		1982
8		Novels 1875–1886		1982
9		Redburn, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick		1983
10		Collected Novels		1983
11		France and England in North America: Volume 1		1983
12		France and England in North America: Volume 2		1983
13		Novels 1871–1880		1983
14		Novels, Mont Saint Michel, The Education	& Jayne N. Samuels	1983
15		Essays and Lectures		1983
16		History, Tales and Sketches		1983
17		Writings		1984
18		Prose and Poetry		1984
19		Poetry and Tales		1984
20		Essays and Reviews		1984
21		The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It		1984
22		Literary Criticism: Essays on Literature, American Writers, English Writers	& Mark Wilson	1984
23		Literary Criticism: French Writers, Other European Writers, Prefaces to the New York Edition	& Mark Wilson	1984
24		Pierre, Israel Potter, The Piazza Tales, The Confidence-Man, Billy Budd, Uncollected Prose		1985
25		Novels 1930–1935	& Noel Polk	1985
26		The Leatherstocking Tales: Volume 1		1985
27		The Leatherstocking Tales: Volume 2		1985
28		A Week, Walden, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod		1985
29		Novels 1881–1886		1985
30		Novels		1986
31		History of the United States during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson (1801–1809)		1986
32		History of the United States during the Administrations of James Madison (1809–1817)		1986
33		Novels and Essays		1986
34		Writings		1986
35		Early Novels and Stories		1987
36		Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, Twelve Men		1987
37A		Silence Dogood, The Busy-Body, and Early Writings		1987
37B		Autobiography, Poor Richard, and Later Writings		1987
38		Writings 1902–1910		1987
39		Collected Works		1988
40		Complete Plays 1913–1920		1988
41		Complete Plays 1920–1931		1988
42		Complete Plays 1932–1943		1988
43		Novels 1886–1890		1989
44		Novels 1886–1888		1989
45		Speeches and Writings 1832–1858		1989
46		Speeches and Writings 1859–1865		1989
47		Novellas and Other Writings		1990
48		Novels 1936–1940	& Noel Polk	1990
49		Later Novels		1990
50		Memoirs and Selected Letters	& William S. McFeeley	1990
51		Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman		1990
52		Bracebridge Hall, Tales of a Traveller, The Alhambra		1991
53		The Oregon Trail, The Conspiracy of Pontiac		1991
54		Sea Tales	& Thomas Philbrick	1991
55		Early Works		1991
56		Later Works		1991
57		Stories, Poems, and Other Writings		1991
58		Writings 1878–1899		1992
59		Main Street and Babbitt		1992
60		Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches and Essays 1852–1890		1992
61		Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches and Essays 1891–1910		1992
62		The Debate on the Constitution: Part One: September 1787 to February 1788		1993
63		The Debate on the Constitution: Part Two: January to August 1788		1993
64		Collected Travel Writings: Great Britain and America		1993
65		Collected Travel Writings: The Continent		1993
66		American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, Volume 1: Freneau to Whitman		1993
67		American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, Volume 2: Melville to Stickney, American Indian Poetry, Folk Songs and Spirituals		1993
68		Autobiographies		1994
69		Novels and Stories		1994
70		Collected Poems and Translations	& Paul Kane	1994
71		Historical Romances		1994
72		Novels and Stories 1932–1937	& Elaine A. Steinbeck	1994
73		Novels 1942–1954	& Noel Polk	1994
74		Novels and Stories		1995
75		Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings		1995
76		Collected Writings		1995
77		Reporting World War II: American Journalism 1938–1944	, Anne Matthews, et al.	1995
78		Reporting World War II: American Journalism 1944–1946	, Anne Matthews, et al.	1995
79		Stories and Early Novels		1995
80		Later Novels and Other Writings		1995
81		Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays	& Mark Richardson	1995
82		Complete Stories 1892–1898	& David Bromwich	1996
83		Complete Stories 1898–1910		1996
84		Travels and Other Writings		1996
85		U.S.A.	& Daniel Aaron	1996
86		The Grapes of Wrath and Other Writings 1936–1941	& Elaine A. Steinbeck	1996
87		Novels and Memoirs 1941–1953		1996
88		Novels 1955–1962		1996
89		Novels 1969–1974		1996
90		Writings and Drawings		1996
91		Writings		1997
92		Nature Writings		1997
93		Novels and Other Writings		1997
94		Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s		1997
95		Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s		1997
96		Collected Poetry and Prose	& Joan Richardson	1997
97		Early Novels and Stories		1998
98		Collected Essays		1998
99		Writings 1903–1932	& Harriet Chessman	1998
100		Writings 1932–1946	& Harriet Chessman	1998
101		Complete Novels	& Michael Kreyling	1998
102		Stories, Essays, and Memoir	& Michael Kreyling	1998
103		Three Gothic Novels		1998
104		Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism 1959–1969	, Lawrence Lichty, et al.	1998
105		Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism 1969–1975	, Lawrence Lichty, et al.	1998
106		Complete Stories 1874–1884		1999
107		Complete Stories 1884–1891		1999
108		American Sermons: The Pilgrims to Martin Luther King Jr.		1999
109		Writings		1999
110		Complete Novels		1999
111		Complete Stories 1864–1874		1999
112		Novels 1957–1962	& Joseph Blotner	1999
113		Writings and Drawings		1999
114		Slave Narratives	& Henry Louis Gates Jr.	2000
115		American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Volume 1: Henry Adams to Dorothy Parker	, John Hollander, et al.	2000
116		American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Volume 2: E. E. Cummings to May Swenson	, John Hollander, et al.	2000
117		Novels and Stories 1920–1922		2000
118		Poems and Other Writings		2000
119		Plays 1937–1955	& Kenneth Holditch	2000
120		Plays 1957–1980	& Kenneth Holditch	2000
121		Collected Stories 1891–1910		2001
122		Collected Stories 1911–1937		2001
123		The American Revolution: Writings from the War of Independence 1775–1783		2001
124		Collected Essays and Poems		2001
125		Crime Stories and Other Writings		2001
126		Novels 1930–1942		2001
127		Novels 1944–1962		2001
128		Complete Novels		2001
129		Writings		2001
130		The Gilded Age and Later Novels		2002
131		Stories, Novels, and Essays		2002
132		Novels 1942–1952		2002
133		Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, Dodsworth		2002
134		The Sheltering Sky, Let It Come Down, The Spider's House		2002
135		Complete Stories and Later Writings		2002
136		Complete Novels and Stories		2002
137		Reporting Civil Rights: American Journalism 1941–1963	, David J. Garrow, et al.	2003
138		Reporting Civil Rights: American Journalism 1963–1973	, David J. Garrow, et al.	2003
139		Novels 1896–1899		2003
140		An American Tragedy		2003
141		Novels 1944–1953		2003
142		Novels 1920–1925		2003
143		Travel Books and Other Writings 1916–1941		2003
144		Poems and Translations		2003
145		Writings		2004
146		Three Western Narratives		2004
147		Democracy in America		2004
148		Studs Lonigan: A Trilogy		2004
149		Collected Stories: Gimpel the Fool to The Letter Writer		2004
150		Collected Stories: A Friend of Kafka to Passions		2004
151		Collected Stories: One Night in Brazil to The Death of Methuselah		2004
152	& Co.	Broadway Comedies		2004
153		The Rough Riders, An Autobiography		2004
154		Letters and Speeches		2004
155		Tales		2005
156		Little Women, Little Men, Jo's Boys		2005
157		Novels and Stories 1959–1962		2005
158		Novels 1967–1972		2005
159		Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, A Death in the Family, and Shorter Fiction		2005
160		Film Writing and Selected Journalism		2005
161		Two Years Before the Mast and Other Voyages		2005
162		Novels 1901–1902		2006
163		Collected Plays 1944–1961		2006
164		Novels 1926–1929	& Noel Polk	2006
165		Novels 1973–1977		2006
166		American Speeches: Political Oratory from the Revolution to the Civil War		2006
167		American Speeches: Political Oratory from Abraham Lincoln to Bill Clinton		2006
168		Complete Poems and Selected Letters		2006
169		Novels 1956–1964		2007
170		Travels with Charley and Later Novels 1947–1962	& Brian Railsback	2007
171		Writings, with Other Narratives of Roanoke, Jamestown, and the First English Settlement of America		2007
172		Collected Plays and Writings on Theater		2007
173		Four Novels of the 1960s		2007
174		Road Novels 1957–1960		2007
175		Zuckerman Bound: A Trilogy and Epilogue 1979–1985		2007
176		Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1920s and 30s		2007
177		Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930s and 40s		2007
178		American Poetry: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries		2007
179		Early Novels and Stories		2008
180		Poems, Prose, and Letters	& Lloyd Schwartz	2008
181		World War II Writings		2008
182		American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau		2008
183		Five Novels of the 1960s and 70s		2008
184		Later Novels and Stories		2008
185		Novels and Other Narratives 1986–1991		2008
186		Collected Stories and Other Writings		2008
187		Collected Poems 1956–1987		2008
188		Collected Stories and Other Writings		2009
189		Complete Novels		2009
190		American Writings		2009
191		The Sweet Science and Other Writings		2009
192		The Lincoln Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Legacy from 1860 to Now		2009
193		VALIS and Later Novels		2009
194		The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Other Novels 1926–1948		2009
195		Collected Stories	& Maureen P. Carroll	2009
196		American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps		2009
197		American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940s to Now		2009
198		Writings		2010
199		The Mark Twain Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Works		2010
200		A Tramp Abroad, Following the Equator, Other Travels		2010
201		Selected Journals 1820–1842		2010
202		Selected Journals 1841–1877		2010
203		The American Stage: Writing on Theater from Washington Irving to Tony Kushner		2010
204		Novels and Stories		2010
205		Novels 1993–1995		2010
206		Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series		2010
207		Prejudices: Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Series		2010
208		The Affluent Society and Other Writings 1952–1967		2010
209		Novels 1970–1982		2010
210		Gods' Man, Madman's Drum, Wild Pilgrimage		2010
211		Prelude to a Million Years, Song Without Words, Vertigo		2010
212		The Civil War: The First Year Told by Those Who Lived It	, Stephen W. Sears, et al.	2011
213		Revolutionary Writings 1755–1775		2011
214		Revolutionary Writings 1775–1783		2011
215		Novels 1903–1911		2011
216		Novels and Stories 1963–1973		2011
217		Harlem Renaissance: Five Novels of the 1920s		2011
218		Harlem Renaissance: Five Novels of the 1930s		2011
219		The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, and Memoirs		2011
220		The American Trilogy 1997–2000		2011
221		The Civil War: The Second Year Told by Those Who Lived It		2012
222		The Guns of August, The Proud Tower		2012
223		Collected Plays 1964–1982		2012
224		The Eighth Day, Theophilus North, Autobiographical Writings		2012
225		Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and 50s		2012
226		Novels and Stories 1950–1962		2012
227		American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels 1953–1956		2012
228		American Science Fiction: Five Classic Novels 1956–1958		2012
229		The Little House Books, Volume 1		2012
230		The Little House Books, Volume 2		2012
231		Collected Poems		2012
232		The War of 1812: Writings from America's Second War of Independence		2012
233		American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation		2012
234		The Civil War: The Third Year Told by Those Who Lived It		2013
235		Collected Stories		2013
236		Novels 2001–2007		2013
237		Nemeses		2013
238		A Sand County Almanac and Other Writings on Ecology and Conservation		2013
239		Collected Poems		2013
240		Collected Poems 1952–1993		2013
241		Collected Poems 1996–2011		2013
242		Collected Early Stories		2013
243		Collected Later Stories		2013
244		Stories and Other Writings		2013
245		Writings from the Great Awakening		2013
246		Essays of the 1960s and 70s		2013
247		Clotel and Other Writings		2014
248		Novels and Stories of the 1940s and 50s		2014
249		Novels and Stories of the 1960s		2014
250		The Civil War: The Final Year Told by Those Who Lived It		2014
251		Shakespeare in America: An Anthology from the Revolution to Now		2014
252		Novels 1976–1985		2014
253		American Musicals 1927–1949: The Complete Books and Lyrics of Eight Broadway Classics		2014
254		American Musicals 1950–1969: The Complete Books and Lyrics of Eight Broadway Classics		2014
255		Four Novels of the 1970s		2014
256		Work, Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, Stories and Other Writings		2014
257		The Days Trilogy, Expanded Edition		2014
258		Music Chronicles 1940–1954		2014
259		Art in America 1945–1970: Writings from the Age of Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Minimalism		2014
260		Novels 1984–2000		2015
261		Collected Plays 1987–2004, with Stage and Radio Plays of the 1930s and 40s		2015
262		Visions of Cody, Visions of Gerard, Big Sur		2015
263		Major Works on Religion and Politics		2015
264		Four Crime Novels of the 1950s		2015
265		The American Revolution: Writings from the Pamphlet Debate, Volume 1, 1764–1772		2015
266		The American Revolution: Writings from the Pamphlet Debate, Volume 2, 1773–1776		2015
267		Four Novels of the 1980s		2015
268		Women Crime Writers: Four Suspense Novels of the 1940s		2015
269		Women Crime Writers: Four Suspense Novels of the 1950s		2015
270		Writings on Landscape, Culture, and Society		2015
271		Four Novels of the 1920s		2015
272		Later Novels		2015
273		Novels 1987–1997		2016
274		Autobiographies		2016
275		Letters		2016
276		Writings from the New Nation 1784–1826		2016
277		The State of Music and Other Writings		2016
278		War No More: Three Centuries of American Antiwar and Peace Writing		2016
279		Three Novels of the Early 1960s		2016
280		Four Later Novels		2016
281		The Complete Orsinia		2016
282		Stories		2016
283		The Unknown Kerouac: Rare, Unpublished and Newly Translated Writings		2016
284		Collected Essays and Memoirs	& Paul Devlin	2016
285		Collected Essays on Evolution, Nature, and the Cosmos, Volume One		2016
286		Collected Essays on Evolution, Nature, and the Cosmos, Volume Two		2016
287		Stories, Plays and Other Writings		2017
288		Collected Writings		2017
289		World War I and America: Told by the Americans Who Lived It		2017
290		Novels and Stories 1942–1963		2017
291		Novels 1963–1979		2017
292		Later Essays		2017
293		Diaries 1779–1821		2017
294		Diaries 1821–1848		2017
295		Four Later Novels		2017
296		Hainish Novels and Stories, Volume One		2017
297		Hainish Novels and Stories, Volume Two		2017
298		Complete Stories 1938–1959		2017
299		Complete Stories 1960–1992		2017
300		Why Write? Collected Nonfiction 1960–2013		2017
301		Complete Poems 1991‒2000		2017
302		Port William Novels and Stories (The Civil War to World War II)		2018
303		Reconstruction: Voices from America's First Great Struggle for Racial Equality		2018
304		Collected Novels and Poems	& Paul Devlin	2018
305		Four Books of the 1960s		2018
306		Collected Essays of the 1960s		2018
307		Silent Spring and Other Writings on the Environment		2018
308		Westerns		2018
309		The Wrinkle in Time Quartet		2018
310		The Polly O'Keefe Quartet		2018
311		Novels 1959–1965		2018
312		Two Novels of the American Revolution		2018
313		Four Novels of the 1930s		2019
314		The Street, The Narrows		2019
315		Always Coming Home (Author's Expanded Edition)		2019
316		Essays 1969–1990		2019
317		Essays 1993–2017		2019
318		The Longest Day, A Bridge Too Far		2019
319		Novels and Stories		2019
320		Complete Poems		2019
321		American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels 1960–1966		2019
322		American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels 1968–1969		2019
323		The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, Little Lord Fauntleroy		2019
324		Complete Novels		2019
325		The 1960s and 70s		2019
326		Novels 1968–1975		2020
327		Collected Stories		2020
328		Dog Soldiers, A Flag for Sunrise, Outerbridge Reach		2020
329		The Fate of the Earth, The Abolition, The Unconquerable World		2020
330		Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Uncollected Essays 1956–1965		2020
331		The Western: Four Classic Novels of the 1940s and 50s		2020
332		American Women's Suffrage: Voices from the Long Struggle for the Vote 1776–1965		2020
333		African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song		2020
334		The Sun Also Rises and Other Writings 1918–1926		2020
335		Annals of the Western Shore		2020
336		Four Novels of the 1940s and 50s		2020
337		Plymouth Colony	& Kelly Wisecup	2020
338		Kindred, Fledgling, Collected Stories	& Nisi Shawl	2021
339		Novels 1978–1984		2021
340		Biophilia, The Diversity of Life, Naturalist		2021
341		The 1980s and 90s		2021
342		Complete Stories and Other Writings		2021
343		Collected Stories		2021
344		Novels and Stories		2021
345		101 Stories		2021
346		Writings		2021
347		Novels and Story Cycles		2021
348		Five Novels		2021
349		Collected Novels		2021
350		Black Reconstruction	& Henry Louis Gates Jr.	2021
351		World War II Memoirs: The Pacific Theater		2021
352		The Sea Trilogy		2021
353		The Great Gatsby, All the Sad Young Men and Other Writings 1920–1926		2022
354		Novels 1986–1990		2022
355		The Woman Warrior, China Men, Tripmaster Monkey, Other Writings		2022
356		Novels, Stories and Poems		2022
357		Collected Poems	& Anthony Hunt	2022
358		Speeches and Writings		2022
359		The Army of the Potomac Trilogy		2022
360		The Illustrated Man, The October Country, Other Stories		2022
361		Bless Me, Ultima, Tortuga, Alburquerque		2022
362		The Mambo Kings and Other Novels	& Laura P. Alonso-Gall	2022
363		Three Novels of the 1980s		2022
364		The Naked and the Dead and Selected Letters 1945–1946		2023
365		Novels 1996–2000		2023
366		Black Writers of the Founding Era	& Nicole Seary	2023
367		Novels and Stories of the 1970s and 80s		2023
368		Collected Poems		2023
369		Collected Works		2023
370		Crime Novels: Five Classic Thrillers 1961–1964		2023
371		Crime Novels: Four Classic Thrillers 1964–1969		2023
372		Collected Plays and Other Writings		2023
373		Novels and Stories		2023
374		Mao II, Underworld		2023
375		Stories		2023
376		Jim Crow: Voices from a Century of Struggle: Part One, Reconstruction to the Red Summer		2024
377		Essential Writings		2024
378		Autobiographies and Other Writings		2024
379		Five Novels		2024
380		The Moviegoer and Other Novels 1961–1971		2024
381		Port William Novels and Stories: The Postwar Years		2024
382		Latino Poetry		2024
383		Four Novels		2024
384		A Farewell to Arms and Other Writings 1927–1932		2024
385		World War II Memoirs: The European Theater		2024
386		Memoirs and Later Writings		2024
387		Jim Crow: Voices from a Century of Struggle: Part Two, Tulsa to the Boston Busing Crisis		2025
388		Collected Writings	, Noelle Baker & Megan Marshall	2025
389		The Origins of Totalitarianism	& Thomas Wild	2025
390		Speeches and Writings		2025
391		Essential Prose		2025
392		Plays	, Michael Paller & Anne Cattaneo	2025
393		Lilith's Brood: The Xenogenesis Trilogy		2025
394		American Short Stories: The Nineteenth Century, Volume 1: Brockden Brown to Twain		2025
395		American Short Stories: The Nineteenth Century, Volume 2: Harte to Dunbar-Nelson		2025
396		Civil War Diaries		2025
397		The Albany Trilogy		2026
398		Encounters in Wild America		2026
399		Five Noir Novels of the 1950s and 60s		2026

Special anthologies

File:Library of America wall with plaques.jpg

Wall containing commemorate plaques and other items, within the Library of America offices in New York

• Writing New York (Phillip Lopate, ed. 1998) Template:ISBN
• American Sea Writing (Peter Neill, ed. 2000) Template:ISBN
• Baseball (Nicholas Dawidoff, ed. 2002) Template:ISBN
• Writing Los Angeles (David L. Ulin, ed. 2002) Template:ISBN
• Americans in Paris (Adam Gopnik, ed. 2004) Template:ISBN
• American Writers at Home (J. D. McClatchy, author, Erica Lennar, photographer 2004) Template:ISBN
• American Movie Critics (Phillip Lopate, ed. 2006) Template:ISBN
• American Religious Poems (Harold Bloom and Jesse Zuba, eds., 2006) Template:ISBN
• American Food Writing (Molly O'Neill, ed., 2007) Template:ISBN
• True Crime: An American Anthology (Harold Schechter, ed., 2008) Template:ISBN
• Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing (Ilan Stavans, ed., 2009) Template:ISBN
• At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing (George Kimball and John Schulian, eds., 2011) Template:ISBN
• The 50 Funniest American Writers: An Anthology of Humor from Mark Twain to The Onion (Andy Borowitz ed., 2011) Template:ISBN
• Into the Blue: American Writing on Aviation and Spaceflight (Joseph J. Corn, ed., 2011) Template:ISBN
• The Cool School: Writing from America's Hip Underground (Glenn O'Brien, ed., 2013) Template:ISBN
• Football: Great Writing about the National Sport (John Schulian, ed., 2014) Template:ISBN
• Shake It Up: Great American Writing on Rock and Pop from Elvis to Jay Z (Kevin Dettmar and Jonathan Lethem, eds., 2017) Template:ISBN
• Basketball: Great Writing About America's Game (Alexander Wolff, ed., 2018) Template:ISBN
• Dance in America: A Reader's Anthology (Mindy Aloff, ed., 2018) Template:ISBN
• The Future Is Female! 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, from Pulp Pioneers to Ursula K. Le Guin (Lisa Yaszek, ed., 2018) Template:ISBN
• The Great American Sports Page: A Century of Classic Columns from Ring Lardner to Sally Jenkins (John Schulian, ed., 2019) Template:ISBN
• American Birds (Andrew Rubenfeld and Terry Tempest Williams, eds., 2020) Template:ISBN
• American Christmas Stories (Connie Willis, ed., 2021) Template:ISBN
• Women's Liberation! Feminist Writings that Inspired a Revolution and Still Can (Alix Kates Shulman and Honor Moore, eds., 2021) Template:ISBN
• The Future Is Female! More Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women (Lisa Yaszek, ed., 2022) Template:ISBN
• The Black Fantastic: Twenty Afrofuturist Stories (André M. Carrington, ed., 2025) Template:ISBN

American poets project

File:Hawthorne- library of america.jpg

Two of Library of America's earliest volumes

• American Wits: An Anthology of Light Verse (John Hollander, editor 2003) Template:ISBN
• Edna St. Vincent Millay: Selected Poems (J. D. McClatchy, editor 2003) Template:ISBN
• Edgar Allan Poe: Poems and Poetics (Richard Wilbur, editor 2003) Template:ISBN
• Poets of World War II (Harvey Shapiro, editor 2003) Template:ISBN
• Karl Shapiro: Selected Poems (John Updike, editor 2003) Template:ISBN
• Walt Whitman: Selected Poems (Harold Bloom, editor 2003) Template:ISBN
• Yvor Winters: Selected Poems (Thom Gunn, editor 2003) Template:ISBN
• John Berryman: Selected Poems (Kevin Young, editor 2004) Template:ISBN
• Kenneth Fearing: Selected Poems (Robert Polito, editor 2004) Template:ISBN
• Amy Lowell: Selected Poems (Honor Moore, editor 2004) Template:ISBN
• Muriel Rukeyser: Selected Poems (Adrienne Rich, editor 2004) Template:ISBN
• John Greenleaf Whittier: Selected Poems (Brenda Wineapple, editor 2004) Template:ISBN
• William Carlos Williams: Selected Poems (Robert Pinsky, editor 2004) Template:ISBN
• The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks (Elizabeth Alexander, editor 2005) Template:ISBN
• Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems (John Hollander, editor 2005) Template:ISBN
• Samuel Menashe: New and Selected Poems (Christopher Ricks, editor 2005) Template:ISBN
• Poets of the Civil War (J. D. McClatchy, editor 2005) Template:ISBN
• Theodore Roethke: Selected Poems (Edward Hirsch, editor 2005) Template:ISBN
• Edith Wharton: Selected Poems (Louis Auchincloss, editor 2005) Template:ISBN
• A. R. Ammons: Selected Poems (David Lehman, editor 2006) Template:ISBN
• Cole Porter: Selected Lyrics (Robert Kimball, editor 2006) Template:ISBN
• Louis Zukofsky: Selected Poems (Charles Bernstein, editor 2006) Template:ISBN
• American Sonnets (David Bromwich, editor 2007) Template:ISBN
• Kenneth Koch: Selected Poems (Ron Padgett, editor 2007) Template:ISBN
• Carl Sandburg: Selected Poems (Paul Berman, editor 2007) Template:ISBN
• Anne Stevenson: Selected Poems (Andrew Motion, editor 2007) Template:ISBN
• James Agee: Selected Poems (Andrew Hudgins, editor 2008) Template:ISBN
• Ira Gershwin: Selected Lyrics (Robert Kimball, editor 2009) Template:ISBN
• Poems from the Women's Movement (Honor Moore, editor 2009) Template:ISBN
• Stephen Foster & Co.: Lyrics of America's First Great Popular Songs (Ken Emerson, editor 2010) Template:ISBN
• Stephen Crane: Complete Poems (Christopher Benfey, editor 2011) Template:ISBN
• Countee Cullen: Collected Poems (Major Jackson, editor 2013) Template:ISBN

Special publications

• Isaac Bashevis Singer: An Album (Ilan Stavans, editor, 2004) Template:ISBN
• Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber (Robert Polito, editor, 2009) Template:ISBN
• Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu: John Updike on Ted Williams (2010) Template:ISBN
• The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael (Sanford Schwartz, editor, 2011) Template:ISBN
• The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard (Ron Padgett, editor, 2012) Template:ISBN
• Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars (2012) Template:ISBN; Tarzan of the Apes (2012) Template:ISBN
• American Pastimes: The Very Best of Red Smith (Daniel Okrent, editor, 2013) Template:ISBN
• The Top of His Game: The Best Sportswriting of W. C. Heinz (Bill Littlefield, editor, 2015) Template:ISBN
• President Lincoln Assassinated!! The Firsthand Story of the Murder, Manhunt, Trial, and Mourning (Harold Holzer, editor, 2015) Template:ISBN
• String Theory: David Foster Wallace on Tennis (2016) Template:ISBN
• My Dearest Julia: The Wartime Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Wife (2018) Template:ISBN
• Harold Bloom, The American Canon: Literary Genius from Emerson to Pynchon (David Mikics, editor, 2019) Template:ISBN
• Kate Bolick, Jenny Zhang, Carmen Maria Machado, and Jane Smiley, March Sisters: On Life, Death, and Little Women (2019) Template:ISBN
• Where the Light Falls: Selected Stories of Nancy Hale (Lauren Groff, editor, 2019) Template:ISBN
• The Peanuts Papers: Writers and Cartoonists on Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the Gang, and the Meaning of Life (Andrew Blauner, editor, 2019) Template:ISBN
• Walt Whitman Speaks: His Final Thoughts on Life, Writing, Spirituality, and the Promise of America, as Told to Horace Traubel (Brenda Wineapple, editor, 2019) Template:ISBN
• American Conservatism: Reclaiming an Intellectual Tradition (Andrew J. Bacevich, editor, 2020) Template:ISBN
• American Democracy: 21 Historic Answers to 5 Urgent Questions (Nicholas Lemann, editor, 2020) Template:ISBN
• The Collected Breece D'J Pancake: Stories, Fragments, Letters (2020) Template:ISBN
• Dolores Hitchens, Sleep with Strangers (2021) Template:ISBN; Sleep with Slander (2021) Template:ISBN
• Molière, The Complete Richard Wilbur Translations, volume 1 (2021) Template:ISBN; volume 2 (2021) Template:ISBN
• Mary Jane Ward, The Snake Pit (2021) Template:ISBN
• Richard Wright, The Man Who Lived Underground (2021) Template:ISBN
• Hannah Arendt, On Lying and Politics (2022) Template:ISBN
• Edward Hirsch, The Heart of American Poetry (2022) Template:ISBN
• Ronald L. Fair, Many Thousand Gone: An American Fable (2023) Template:ISBN
• Nancy Hale, The Prodigal Women (2023) Template:ISBN
• John A. Williams, The Man Who Cried I Am (2023) Template:ISBN
• Hannah Arendt and Henry David Thoreau, On Civil Disobedience (2024) Template:ISBN
• The MAD Files: Writers and Cartoonists on the Magazine that Warped America's Brain (David Mikics, editor, 2024) Template:ISBN
• Jay Parini, Robert Frost: Sixteen Poems to Learn by Heart (2024) Template:ISBN
• S. J. Perelman, Cloudland Revisited: A Misspent Youth in Books and Film (2024) Template:ISBN; Crazy Like a Fox (2024) Template:ISBN
• O. Henry for the Holidays: Seven Classic Thanksgiving and Christmas Stories (2025) Template:ISBN
• Sarah Ruden, I Am the Arrow: The Life and Art of Sylvia Plath in Six Poems (2025) Template:ISBN
• Ursula K. Le Guin's Book of Cats (2025) Template:ISBN
• Helen Vendler, Inhabit the Poem: Last Essays (2025) Template:ISBN
• The Testimony of Henry Adams, Freedman: Hope, Terror, and Exodus in the Post-Civil War South (2026) Template:ISBN
• Walt Whitman, On Democracy (2026) Template:ISBN
• Ted Widmer, The Living Declaration: A Biography of America's Founding Text (2026) Template:ISBN

See also

• Bibliothèque de la Pléiade

External links

• List of all main series titles
• "Forty Years of the LOA Series: Top Volumes 1982–2022"
• Nonprofit Explorer 501(c)(3) listings at ProPublica