Authors at Home (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

Subtitled “Personal and Biographical Sketches of Well-Known American Writers,” this collection includes chapters on George Bancroft, George Washington Cable, William Dean Howells, Francis Parkman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, and many others. The Gilders were well connected in the literary world, enabling them to have access to writers who otherwise might have been reluctant to open their private lives to journalists.