The Narratives of Empire series is a heptalogy of historical novels by Gore Vidal, published between 1967 and 2000, which chronicle the dawn-to-decadence history of the "American Empire"; the narratives interweave the personal stories of two families with the personages and events of U.S. history. Despite the publisher's preference for the politically neutral series-title "American Chronicles", Vidal preferred the series title "Narratives of Empire". The seven novels can be read in either historical or publication order without losing narrative intelligibility.[1]
| Title | Published | Order | Story timeline | Description | Characters | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Publication | Chronological | Historical | Fictional | |||||
| Burr | 1973 | 2 | 1 | 1775–1808, 1833–1836, 1840 | Set during the politically contentious era of the Jackson administration, an elderly and active Aaron Burr recounts his experiences of the Revolutionary War and America's Founding Fathers to a young law clerk secretly working for the press. | Charlie Schuyler, Carolina de Traxler, William de la Touche Clancey | ||
| Lincoln | 1984 | 4 | 2 | 1861–1865, 1867 | Members of President Abraham Lincoln's government and household help to carry out his policy of preserving the Union through a dreadful and bloody Civil War. | Abraham Lincoln, John Hay, John Nicolay, Elihu Washburne, Mary Todd Lincoln, William Seward, Salmon P. Chase, David Herold, Mary Surratt, John Wilkes Booth, Kate Chase, William Sprague | William Sanford, Charlie Schuyler, Emma Schuyler d'Agrigente, William de la Touche Clancey | |
| 1876 | 1976 | 3 | 3 | 1875–1877 | After forty years abroad, an American writer returns to the US during the Reconstruction Era to find New York and Washington transformed by recession, extreme wealth and political corruption, all culminating in the theft of the 1876 United States presidential election. | Charlie Schuyler, Emma Schuyler d'Agrigente, John Day Apgar, William Sanford, Denise Delacroix Sanford, William de la Touche Clancey. | ||
| Empire | 1987 | 5 | 4 | 1898–1907 | A circle of political intellectuals and enterprising newspaper editors learn of the power they wield as they both push for and chronicle the growth of the American Empire at the turn of the 20th Century | Caroline Sanford, Blaise Sanford, James Burden Day, John Apgar Sanford, Mrs. Delacroix | ||
| Hollywood | 1990 | 6 | 5 | 1917–1923 | From the perspectives of filmmakers, news publishers and political operatives, a burgeoning and experimental motion picture industry in Los Angeles (taken over as the propaganda arm of an authoritarian presidential administration) rises to wealth and international prominence in the First World War; all resulting in a political backlash of isolationism, prohibition, censorship and a second-rate presidency. | Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Jess Smith, George Creel, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Charlie Chaplin, Marion Davies, Elinor Glyn, Mabel Normand, William Desmond Taylor | Caroline Sanford, Blaise Sanford, James Burden Day | |
| Washington, D.C. | 1967 | 1 | 6 | 1937–1954 | This is a story of political life in Washington among congressmen, the press and the social elites during the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower | Blaise Sanford, Peter Sanford, James Burden Day, Clay Overbury | ||
| The Golden Age | 2000 | 7 | 7 | 1939–1954, 2000 | The US is maneuvered into the Second World War by President Roosevelt, whose successors pursue a fatal Cold War policy of military and economic domination just as the nation has become the center of western art and culture. | Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Hopkins, Harry S. Truman, Wendell Willkie, Dean Acheson, Herbert Hoover, Gore Vidal, John La Touche, Dawn Powell, Tennessee Williams | Caroline Sanford, Blaise Sanford, Peter Sanford, James Burden Day, Clay Overbury | |