This author, from Salem, Massachusetts, wrote stories about sin, guilt, and concerns about witchcraft in Puritan New England. He was a dark romantic who felt these qualities were natural in humans. He is most known for his work from which the following excerpt is taken:

"Her attire, which, indeed, she had wrought for the occasion, in prison, and had modeled much after her own fancy, seemed to express the attitude of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild and picturesque peculiarity. But the point which drew all eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearer,--so that both men and women, who had been familiarly acquainted with Hester Prynne, were now impressed as if they beheld her for the first time,--was that SCARLET LETTER, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself."

This author was one of the earliest American fiction writers. His works include Rip Van Winkle (1819) and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820). An excerpt adapted from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820): 

"From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of Sleepy Hollow, and its rustic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the neighboring country. A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere."

This author, born in San Francisco, drew on his adventures as a sailor, and gold prospector to write exciting tales about dogs in the North and voyages on the high seas. In his most popular book, he writes: 

"Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean toward each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness."

This author is best known for his five-book Leatherstocking series, part of which is excerpted here:

“Let the Frenchman and all his host go to the devil, sir!” exclaimed the hasty veteran. “He is not yet master of William Henry, nor shall he ever be, provided Webb proves himself the man he should. No, sir, thank Heaven we are not yet in such a strait that it can be said Munro is too much pressed to discharge the little domestic duties of his own family. Your mother was the only child of my bosom friend, Duncan; and I’ll just give you a hearing, though all the knights of St. Louis were in a body at the sally–port, with the French saint at their head, crying to speak a word under favor. A pretty degree of knighthood, sir, is that which can be bought with sugar hogsheads! and then your twopenny marquisates. The thistle is the order for dignity and antiquity; the veritable ‘nemo me impune lacessit’ of chivalry. Ye had ancestors in that degree, Duncan, and they were an ornament to the nobles of Scotland.”

This author, from Boston, was an ordained minister. He was a philosopher, essayist, and poet who explored the mind and man's relationship with nature. In one of his works, he writes:

"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried."

Oedipa Maas, Pierce Inverarity, and Dr. Hilarius are characters from which of the following works of literature?

124, Paul D, Baby Suggs, and Denver are characters in which of the following literary works?

This Pulitzer- and Nobel-Prize winning novelist and three-time recipient of the National Book Award wrote such novels as The Adventures of Augie March and Herzog. Who is he?

Death Comes for the Archbishop and My Ántonia are by which American author?

Which of the following interconnected short story collections features a nameless recovering drug addict as its central narrator?