Literary essays

The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings is a collection that displays the full force of Edgar Allen Poe's mastery of both Gothic horror and the short story form.

One of the most powerful, perceptive and influential works of criticism in Western literary history In his near-contemporary account of classical Greek tragedy, Aristotle examines the dramatic elements of plot, character, language and spectacle that combine to produce pity and fear in the audience, and asks why we derive pleasure from this apparently painful process.

"e;Thou has the keys of Paradise, oh just, subtle, and mighty opium!

Written in the late sixteenth century, at the pinnacle of the English Renaissance, the rich and ingenious works of Thomas Nashe uniquely reveal the ambivant nature of the Elizabethan era.

Campo Santo is a collection of essays by W.

'These sixteen pieces brim over with vitality .

In these two closely linked works - a travel book and a biography of its author - we witness a moving encounter between two of the most daring and original minds of the late eighteenth century: A Short Residence in Sweden is the record of Wollstonecraft's last journey in search of happiness, into the remote and beautiful backwoods of Scandinavia.

More than any other writer Gilbert White (1720-93) has shaped the relationship between man and nature.

'She is alive and active - we hear her voice and trace her influence even now' Virginia WoolfWriting in an age when the call for the rights of man had brought revolution to America and France, Mary Wollstonecraft produced her own declaration of female independence in 1792.

When Yorick, the roving narrator of Sterne's innovative final novel, sets off for France on a whim, he produces no ordinary travelogue.

'Enigmatic, vatic, emphatic, passionate .

A Room of One's Own, based on a lecture given at Girton College Cambridge, is one of the great feminist polemics.

William Burroughs work was dedicated to an assault upon language, traditional values and all agents of control.

'One of the greatest books of a very great thinker' Michael TannerBeyond Good and Evil confirmed Nietzsche's position as the towering European philosopher of his age.

Jeremy Clarkson, shares his opinions on just about everything in The World According to Clarkson.

Italo Calvino was due to deliver the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard in 1985-86, but they were left unfinished at his death.

Italo Calvino once said that he preferred to give false details about his biography since he felt that even the genuine data of a writer's life shed no light on the creative work.

A much-loved classic of nature writing from environmentalist and the author of Waterlog, Roger Deakin, Wildwood is an exploration of the element wood in nature, our culture and our lives.

First and foremost an outcry against injustice and inhumanity, Unto this Last is also a closely argued assault on the science of political economy, which dominated the Victorian period.

'But I ran up the broken stairway, and came out suddenly, as if by a miracle, clean on the platform of my San Tommaso, in the tremendous sunshine.

'.

'You shall have thousands of gold pieces; - thousands of thousands - millions - mountains of gold: where will you keep them?

'No voice, no low, no howl is heard; the chief sound of life here is a hiss.

'Masterly, hilarious, truly insightful' - Philip Hensher, The Spectator A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year 2019 The last major collection of Nabokov's published material, Think, Write, Speak brings together a treasure trove of previously uncollected texts from across the author's extraordinary career.

'No one characteristic clasps us purely and universally in its embrace.

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Malthus' life's work on human population and its dependency on food production and the environment was highly controversial on publication in 1798.

'Better mad with the crowd than sane all alone'In these witty, Machiavellian aphorisms, unlikely Spanish priest Baltasar Graci n shows us how to exploit friends and enemies alike to thrive in a world of deception and illusion.

'It is a most wonderful comfort to sit alone beneath a lamp, book spread before you, and commune with someone from the past whom you have never met.

Eric Gill's opinionated manifesto on typography argues that 'a good piece of lettering is as beautiful a thing to see as any sculpture or painted picture'.

The definitive Norman Mailer collection, as he writes on Marilyn Monroe, culture, ideology, boxing, Hemingway, politics, sex, celebrity and - of course - Norman MailerFrom his early 'A Credo for the Living', published in 1948, when the author was twenty-five, to his final writings in the year before his death, Mailer wrestled with the big themes of his times.

First recorded 1500 years ago, but taking its origins from a far earlier oral tradition, the Pancatantra is ascribed by legend to the celebrated, half-mythical teacher Visnu Sarma.

In the essays collected here William Langewiesche considers how flying has altered not only how we move about the earth, but also how we view our world and our place in it.

Lawyer, philosopher, statesman and defender of Rome's Republic, Cicero was a master of eloquence, and his pure literary and oratorical style and strict sense of morality have been a powerful influence on European literature and thought for over two thousand years in matters of politics, philosophy, and faith.

Describing bizarrely popular Victorian street slang, the madness of crowds, stock market mania (from the South Sea Bubble to Tulip fever), popular fashions, fads, crazes, schemes and scams, this brilliantly entertaining and ever-more relevant study of human folly shows that we are always susceptible to hysteria and bamboozlement.

In this hilarious, inspiring and provocative series of essays, Kingsley Amis introduces every reader to the wonders and value of science fiction writing.

A vivid historical imagining of life in the early United States';One of the richest books ever to come my way.

A moving and original literary approach to self-understanding through social media"e;The hunger for a feeling of connection that informs most everything I've written flows from a common break in a common heart, one I share with everyone I've ever really known.

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in CriticismA leading trans scholar and activist explores cultural representations of gender transition in the modern periodIn Pleasure and Efficacy, Grace Lavery investigates gender transition as it has been experienced and represented in the modern period.

The most comprehensive one-volume collection of Goethe's writings ever published in EnglishThe Essential Goethe is the most comprehensive and representative one-volume collection of Goethe's writings ever published in English.

'I am greatly relieved that the universe is finally explainable.

A collection of 36 extraordinary stories originally told on stage, featuring work by writers, entertainers, thinkers, and community leaders.

From a devoted reader and lifelong bookseller, an eloquent and charming reflection on the singular importance of bookstoresDo we need bookstores in the twenty-first century?

Este nuevo "Morir no es poco II.

A memoir of leaving the evangelical church and the search for radical new ways to build community.

"Narradores somos todos.

Select Conversations With An Uncle & 2 Other Reminiscences presents H.

The Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated Edition) gathers the extraordinary range of Twain's fiction, essays, sketches, travel writing, and social criticism, presenting a panoramic view of nineteenth-century American letters.

Este libro es un manual de instrucciones para tener sueños lúcidos, dirigido tanto a niños como a personas encarceladas (literalmente o no).

James Joyce's Ibsen's New Drama is a precocious critical essay centered on Henrik Ibsen's late play When We Dead Awaken, then newly received by European readers.