Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Booth Tarkington — Story, Setting & Ideas

Structure and Navigation

The index is organized as a list of titles, each preceded by a double hash mark. Clicking the hash opens a linked table of contents for that volume, while clicking the title itself opens the full text. This dual-link system allows a reader to either browse chapter headings or jump directly to the work. The tables of contents reproduce the original chapter titles, which in Tarkington's hands are often playful or evocative—Penrod includes chapters like “A Boy and His Dog” and “The Pageant of the Table Round,” while The Conquest of Canaan uses epigraph-style headings such as “Ye'll Tak' the High Road and I'll Tak' the Low Road.”

Range of Works

The twelve volumes span Tarkington's career from 1899 to 1921, including his most famous novels and several lesser-known pieces. The Flirt (1913) and Alice Adams (1921) are social dramas set in the Midwest, while Penrod (1914) and Seventeen (1916) are comic portraits of boyhood and adolescence. The collection also includes Monsieur Beaucaire (1900), a historical romance, and The Two Vanrevels (1902), a tale of love and dueling. Shorter works such as Harlequin and Columbine and In the Arena round out the selection, offering glimpses of Tarkington's range in form and tone.

Editorial Choices

David Widger, the editor, has compiled the index without annotation or commentary. The text is drawn from Project Gutenberg editions, and the index itself is a straightforward list. No attempt is made to group works by theme or chronology; the order appears to follow the sequence of Project Gutenberg releases. The index includes a note that clicking the title opens the original online file, and the tables of contents are linked for each volume. This minimal editorial intervention makes the index a neutral tool, useful for readers who want to locate a specific chapter or compare the structure of multiple novels.

Readers interested in Tarkington's development as a writer may use this index to trace recurring motifs—such as small-town life, adolescent mischief, or social ambition—across different works. The chapter titles themselves often signal shifts in tone, from the mock-heroic in Penrod to the ironic in The Turmoil. Because the index provides only titles and chapter headings, it invites exploration rather than analysis.