The only one that came to my mind was Moll Flanders, and even then it’s only partially set in Virginia.
What works of literature (defined any way you choose) are written by an author fro the UK but take place in the US? And vice versa: what work of literature are written by a Yank but take place in the UK?
There are plenty of Sherlock Holmes stories written by Yanks, but set (of course) in the UK, like Nicholas Meyer’s Seven Per Cent Solution, The West End Horror and The Canary Trainer.
For that matter, Doyle himself set stories in the US, including the entire second half of the Sherlock Holmes novels A Study in Scarlet and The Valley of Fear.
Hmm. Would Defoe count? He was British and Robinson Crusoe is certainly set in the Americas. Might be the very first one give its publication date of 1719.
Ken MClure is a Scottish writer I’ve just discovered. The first of his books I read was called “Past Lives” and the hero is an American neurologist in Kansas. And although he spends most of the book unravelling the mystery in various parts of Europe and Israel, he starts and ends in Kansas.
Similarly, another Scot; Val McDermid - or VL McDermid as she is called on her books when they’re published in America - has a heroine who lives in California. She also admittedly spends a lot of her time sleuthing in foreign parts, though.
John Connolly, an Irishman, sets his entire Charlie Parker series of detective thrillers in the U.S., mostly Maine.
R.J. Ellory, whose astounding *A Quiet Belief in Angels *will be released in the U.S. any minute now, is from Birmingham, England; it is set in the rural South in the '30s.
Bernard Cornwall was born in Britain and now lives in the US, and he’s written books set in both Britain and the US, so I don’t know if that counts. Ken Follett’s books Code to Zero, The Third Twin, The Hammer of Eden and A Place Called Freedom are all set in America. Edward Rutherfurd’s upcoming work New York will be set in America.