- John Smith, The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Islands
- William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation
- Thomas Morton, The New English Canaan
- Anne Bradstreet, Selected Poems
- Mary Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration
- Jean de Crèvecouer, Letters from an American Farmer. Letter III: What Is an American
- Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography (A Selection)
- Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence
- Constitution of the United States
- Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects
- Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself
- Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself
- Frederick Douglas, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, an American Slave, Written by Himself
- Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
- Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven
- Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet
- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (A Selection)
- Emily Dickinson, Poems
- James Fenimore Cooper, Introduction to The Last of the Mohicans
- Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle
- Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
In 'American Literature from its Origins the Nineteenth Century', Elena Ortells has compiled extracts written by these authors and some of the other more outstanding voices of this early period in American life. It is a unique window into the minds of real people who endeavored to articulate the gestation of the illusive American Dream.
