Earlier Indiana authors, such as Robert Dale Owen, Solon Robinson, Sarah T. Bolton and Joseph S. Welsh, as well as later ones such as Theodore Dreiser, Ross Lockridge, Jr., Ernie Pyle, and Kurt Vonnegut are well represented in the Lilly Library's collections. A merican L iterature in the L illy L ibrary American literature is one of the principal strengths of the Lilly Library. There are good holdings in both prose and verse from the 18th century and extensive collections of first and other important editions for all major and many minor 19th century American authors. Of particular note are the collections of James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman.
American literature are extensive.
The manuscript materials include the principal archives of Upton Sinclair, Max Eastman, Sylvia Plath, Galway Kinnell, and others, as well as notable collections from Edith Wharton, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, and several more recent writers. The archives of Bobbs-Merrill, Capra Press, and a number of little magazines have added substantially to our records of modern publishing and the authors represented in their files. In printed books, first and other significant editions of 20th century American authors now number well over 20,000 titles. Further, the Library maintains a standing order for first editions of new works by nearly three hundred living British and American writers. Up to the age of John Milton the Library's collection in British literature is primarily one of great books, but from the middle of the 17th century to the present, efforts have been made to collect many authors in depth.