The Bondwoman’s Narrative: Hannah Crafts eloquently details the experiences of a light skinned female slave in the South in the decades preceding the Civil War, describing the story of "passing" as a young slave working on a wealthy North Carolina plantation who runs away in a bid for freedom up North. Discovered in the form as an unpublished manuscript by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. it is believed that this is the first slave narrative written by an African-American woman from only her perspective. During the most emotionally difficult parts of the story, where mistreatment, death, and extreme cruelty are revealed, the author provides soothing relief for the reader through her faith in a loving, protecting God. tells the story of Hannah Crafts, Her compelling story provides a fascinating view of American life in the mid-1800s and the literary conventions of the time. Written in the 1850s, this is a provocative literary landmark and a significant historical event.

The Coquette: A cautionary novel written at the end of the eighteenth century describes the seduction and betrayal of a beautiful young woman, in this instance the semi-fictional Eliza Wharton. The novel tells the fictionalized story of the seduction and death of Elizabeth Whitman, a poet from Hartford, Connecticut. Written as a series of letters–between the heroine and her friends and lovers—it describes her long, tortuous courtship by two men, neither of whom perfectly suits her. Eliza is no ingenuous sixteen-year-old; she is past adolescence, has opinions, and wants more from her life than the narrow path that has been allotted to her. She agrees to an engagement she does not want because "both nature and education had instilled into my mind an implicit obedience to the will and desires of my parents," but also because "I saw, from our first acquaintance, his declining health; and expected, that the event should prove as it has." After her fiancé’s death, Eliza wavers between Major Sanford, a charming but insincere man, and the Reverend Boyer, a bore who wants to marry her. When, in her mid-30s, Wharton finds herself suddenly abandoned when both men marry other women, she willfully enters into an adulterous relationship with Sanford and becomes pregnant. Alone and dejected, she dies in childbirth at a roadside inn. Eliza Wharton was one of the first women in American fiction to emerge as a real person facing a dilemma in her life. Her death was the required literary ending of her time, but her dynamic, frustrated personality and the questions she raises about women's place in society make this both a cautionary tale and a critique of the world that made them necessary.

Our Nig: Ignored by critics upon its publication and "lost" for more than one hundred years, Our Nig was rediscovered and reprinted in 1983 and is currently considered to be the first novel by an African-American published in the United States. The tale combines elements of nineteenth-century slave narratives and domestic novels and defies the social conventions of its time by portraying interracial marriage, child abandonment, cruel Northerners, and an African-American heroine who is full of energy, intelligence, and imagination, bowed only by prolonged and arduous toil. The story begins with six year-old Frado, deserted by her white mother after the death of her black father and left to live as a servant with the Bellmonts. While some Bellmont family members are sympathetic, Frado is treated like a slave by the mistress of the house and her daughter. By the time Frado is an adult she fulfills duties in "all departments - man, boy, housekeeper, domestic, etc." One by one, Frado's allies are taken from her, replaced finally by a man with whom "she opened her heart to the presence of love" - and who then deserts her.

Ruth Hall is essentially Fanny Fern's (Sara Willis Parton) semi-autobiography, pretty much taken directly from her own life and experiences. The fictionalized autobiography that can be divided into three phases: Ruth's happy marriage, impoverished widowhood, and rise to fame and financial independence as a newspaper columnist.Ruth Hall loses her husband and is forced to deal with less than kind in-laws. Ruth is a talented writer and supports herself and her two children by writing newspaper columns. The novel recounts her attempt to rise above social and gender discrimination and expected gender roles to become one of the most successful writers (female or male) of her time. Fanny Fern is an often overlooked but important author.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Uncle Tom is a pre-civil war black slave, routinely trodden on due to his non-human status. Even with the luxuries he is given, he is continually reminded that his status before the law is only property-he has no rights, no freedom. Yet he always manages to unconditionally love his owners: the Shelbys, the St. Claires, and finally even Simon Legree. And in the course being sold and purchased, he changes the lives of many people around him. One moving example of Tom's love is toward Cassie. Once a beautiful and sophisticated woman, she is mercilessly abused as a slave and stripped of all her dignity. Through Tom's witness and sacrifice, her deep bitterness and hatred are melted away so she can love and be loved again.

Typee: Although initially rejected as too fantastic to be true, Typee  established Melville's reputation as the literary discoverer of the South Seas. Two common sailors jump ship and are held in benign captivity by Polynesian natives. The story primarily recounts the exploits of Tom, a runaway sailor, on the South Seas island of Nukuheva, from his capture by the Typees, by reputation a "fierce and unrelenting tribe of savages," to his daring escape when he realizes they have no intention of ever letting him return to his former life. Through the narrator's eyes we see a literate (if romanticized) portrait of the people and their culture presented in vivid, even scientific, detail. Melville's racy style and irreverence toward Christian missionaries caused a scandal, and critics denounced the narrator's suggestion that the native life might be superior to that of modern civilization. Typee tells the story of South Seas customs, rituals and society, while providing a provocative critique of civilized Western life.