What’s Great about Gatsby?
Library of America Programs are Online FREE
The Library of America, a nonprofit organization, champions the nation’s cultural heritage by publishing America’s greatest writing in authoritative new editions.1 Its mission is to renew and preserve the literary heritage of the United States. To accomplish this, the Library publishes the best American writing of the past. As part of the historic preservation movement, the Library attempts to make permanently available, at moderate cost, books that have remained crucial to the formation of American culture.2 Widely recognized as the definitive collection of American writing, Library of America editions encompass all periods and genres—including acknowledged classics, neglected masterpieces, and historically important documents and texts—and showcase the vitality and variety of America’s literary legacy.3
A Contentious Start
The Library of America began in 1982. The story of its founding in Humanities magazine provides the contentious history of the establishment of this initiative to publish standard editions of American classics (link in footnote).4 President Jimmy Carter’s appointment of Joseph M. Duffey to head the National Endowment of the Humanities was a critical event.
The Library of America was launched in 1982. The first four volumes (sold by subscription and in bookstores) included Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Library of America (LOA) -Today-381 Writers
381 writers have been selected for the Library of America. LOA writers—whether playwrights or presidents, novelists or war reporters, essayists or art critics—are selected for their gifts of language and narrative, their unique contribution to our literature, and their enduring reflection of a significant moment in American history.
A complete list is linked at this footnote.5
LOA LIVE: Online programs inspired by Library of America publications
In 2020 the Library of America launched online programs about its authors.6 The top 10 most popular are:
Reading James Baldwin Now
Joan Didion: The Art of Storytelling
Harold Bloom & the American Canon
Who Tells Your Story: Joanne B. Freeman on Hamilton and History
A Tribute to Gary Snyder
The Genius of Hemingway
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life
The Paranoid Style in American Politics: Richard Hofstadter in the Time of Trump
Richard Wright’s The Man Who Lived Underground
Burning Boy: the Extraordinary Life and Work of Stephen Crane
All are available free at the Library of America website: LOA LIVE: Top 10 Programs of All Time | Library of America
A recent program online is a “Celebration of Ray Bradbury”.
The next program— September 21, 2023, is The Mysterious Greatness of Gatsby Registration, Thu, Sep 21, 2023 at 6:00 PM | Eventbrite
Hurley, C. Rescuing America’s literary heritage: The story of the library of America. Publishing Research Quarterly 12, 36–49 (1996).
Skinner, David. (2015). “Edmund Wilson’s Big Idea: A Series of Books Devoted to Classic American Writing.” | HUMANITIES, September/October 2015, V. 36.
Library of America Series | Library of America (loa.org); alphabetical order is here: Writers | Library of America (loa.org) Sort by date here: Books | Library of America (loa.org)
I'm very glad to hear about these programs. I didn't iknow they were offerig so many of them.
This is all admirable, but anyone can publish any of these books, if they want, on Amazon, if they are in the public domain. For example I could publish a Gatsby tomorrow in an ebook form and start charging for it, and if I wanted to pay the printing cost I could probably do that, I could probably even arrange for a printer to put out books individually as they were ordered. In fact there are people that sell their system to do this to make money. Something I would never do. For what it's worth, if you have a Kindle Paperwhite, the best thing to do is go to project Gutenberg where you can find almost anything that is out of copyright in an ebook form and put it on your paperwhite. I just did that with a whole bunch of Ray Bradbury. You can also find books on Internet Archive. I found a couple there written by one of my ancestors in the mid 19th century. Anyway just information, be well. If you're interested, check out my first novel in ebook form written 20 years ago on Amazon. It be just all right: an island journey. And also my second novel which I'm serializing on substatic and it's there for free with audio for now, and almost completed. A Builder's Tale.