There are many American authors who are now in the public domain. A short sampling of them is :
Benjamin Franklin
James Madison
Thomas Jefferson
Herman Melville
Louisa May Alcott
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Horatio Alger
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Washington Irving
Edgar Allan Poe
Ambrose Bierce
Theodore Dreiser
Jack London
Mark Twain
H.G. Wells
Some great American authors from that time are Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, James Fenimore Cooper, Benjamin Franklin, and Stephen Crane.
