Essays category: 9344 books

A dazzling collection of occasional writings by the Nobel Prize-winning novelist on subjects ranging from Thermopylae to the English Channel, and from Coral Island to Jules Verne. 'A book of occasional essays which afford us many fascinating insights into Golding the man . . .It is highly individual...

In this collection of essays, consummate poet Wallace Stevens reflects upon his art. His aim is not to produce a work of criticism or philosophy, or a mere discussion of poetic technique. As he explains in his introduction, his ambition in these various pieces, published in different times and...

An essential collection of William Faulkner’s mature nonfiction work, updated, with an abundance of new material. This unique volume includes Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech, a review of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (in which he suggests that Hemingway has found God),...

Woudstra's literary essays, rooted in personal experience and travel, are long and loving looks into the mysterious heart of Africa. Her writings explore topics as diverse as volcanic eruptions and wild trees, African art and ritual, life in Rwanda, and turtle eggs in warm sand. "Like Annie Dillard,...

A collection of critical essays from award-winning author Dorothy Allison about identity, gender politics, and queer theory, now with a new preface Lambda Award and American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Award–winning author Dorothy Allison is known for her bold and insightful writing...

Graywolf reissues one of its most successful essay collections with two new essays and a new foreword by Charles Baxter As much a rumination on the state of literature as a technical manual for aspiring writers, Burning Down the House has been enjoyed by readers and taught in classrooms for...

Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul brings his signature gifts of observation, his ferocious impatience with received truths, and his masterfully condensed prose to these eleven essays on reading, writing, and identity—which have been brought together for the first time. Here the subject is Naipaul’s...

Part memoir, part handbook, part survey of the contemporary literary scene, Joan Frank’s Because You Have To: A Writing Life is a collection of essays that, taken together, provide a walking tour of the writing life. Frank’s aim is to form a coherent vision, one that may provide some communion...

Why should one half be free to live, while the other is doomed to watch silently from the sidelines? In this visionary collection, Virginia Woolf leads us on a transformative journey through the liberating powers of the mind. From an exploration of why women were barred from writing and under what...

Virginia Woolf began writing reviews for the Guardian 'to make a few pence' from her father's death in 1904, and continued until the last decade of her life. The result is a phenomenal collection of articles, of which this selection offers a fascinating glimpse, which display the gifts of a dazzling...

From the author of The Tunnel comes a new collection of essays, his first in eight years, on art, writing, nature and culture. This book is by one of the most important and briliant thinkers at work today.

Founder of the detective genre and author of works on cryptography, Edgar Allan Poe possessed what Shawn Rosenheim called a “cryptographic imagination.” Not only was Poe’s work influenced by secret writing, it inspired future critics to search his texts for secret clues and that fostered new...

Twenty-five years of essays from one of America’s most prolific and acclaimed writers, the New York Times–bestselling author of Legends of the Fall.   The bestselling author of thirty-nine books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry—including Dalva and Returning to Earth—Jim Harrison was one...

An English poet, literary critic and philosopher. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria. His critical work, especially on Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking...