The essay is one of the richest of literary forms. Its most obvious characteristics are freedom, informality, and the personal touch--though it can also find room for poetry, satire, fantasy, and sustained argument. All these qualities, and many others, are on display in The Oxford Book of Essays. The most wide-ranging collection of its kind to appear for many years, it includes 140 essays by 120 writers: classics, curiosities, meditations, diversions, old favorites, recent examples that deserve to be better known. A particularly welcome feature is the amount of space allotted to American essayists, from Benjamin Franklin to John Updike and beyond. This is an anthology that opens with wise words about the nature of truth, and closes with a consideration of the novels of Judith Krantz. Some of the other topics discussed in its pages are anger, pleasure, Gandhi, Beau Brummell, wasps, party-going, gangsters, plumbers, Beethoven, potato crisps, the importance of being the right size, and the demolition of Westminster Abbey. It contains some of the most eloquent writing in English, and some of the most entertaining.

An intriguing collection of more than 70 Latin American essays, some never before translated into English, gives us the whole spectrum of concerns that have animated some of the greatest writers of our time--from Andres Bello, Pablo Neruda, and Alfonso Reyes to Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Rosario Ferre--an assembly confident, ingenious, aware.

Sets out in a new and authoritative way the history of the essay; explains how the essay has come to mean what it does, surveys the widely various incarnations of the form, offers new accounts of major essayists in English, and traces a wide range of significant themes.

Stoic philosopher and tutor to the young emperor Nero, Seneca wrote moral essays - exercises in practical philosophy - on how to live in a troubled world. Strikingly applicable today, his thoughts on happiness and other subjects are here combined in a clear, modern translation with an introduction on Seneca's life and philosophy.

'A good essay must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in, not out.' According to Virginia Woolf, the goal of the essay 'is simply that it should give pleasure...It should lay us under a spell with its first word, and we should only wake, refreshed, with its last.' One of the best practitioners of the art she analysed so rewardingly, Woolf displayed her essay-writing skills across a wide range of subjects, with all the craftsmanship, substance, and rich allure of her novels. This selection brings together thirty of her best essays, including the famous 'Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown', a clarion call for modern fiction. She discusses the arts of writing and of reading, and the particular role and reputation of women writers. She writes movingly about her father and the art of biography, and of the London scene in the early decades of the twentieth century. Overall, these pieces are as indispensable to an understanding of this great writer as they are enchanting in their own right. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

When this book was originally published in 1957 there had been lively debates on the air and in the press about the bearing of modern philosophy upon Christianity, but there had been relatively little sustained discussion of the subject. This book of essays was the product of a small group of Oxford philosophers and theologians, who had met and talked informally for some years before writing it. It is an attempt to discuss with care and candour some of the problems raised for Christian belief by contemporary analytical philosophy. In asking the questions raised, this book makes articulate the perplexities of many intelligent people, both believers and unbelievers. The contributors concentrate on the way such concepts as God, Revelation, the Soul, Grace are actually used rather than asserting or denying some very general theory of meaning.

The Essential Guide to Writing History Essays is a step-by-step guide to the typical assignments of any undergraduate or master's-level history program in North America. Effective writing is a process of discovery, achieved through the continual act of making choices--what to include or exclude, how to order elements, and which style to choose--each according to the author's goals and the intended audience. The book integrates reading and specialized vocabulary with writing and revision and addresses the evolving nature of digital media while teaching the terms and logic of traditional sources and the reasons for citation as well as the styles. This approach to writing not only helps students produce an effective final product and build from writing simple, short essays to completing a full research thesis, it also teaches students why and how an essay is effective, empowering them to approach new writing challenges with the freedom to find their own voice.

The first of eight volumes of Hopkins's Collected Works to be published, Oxford Essays and Notes presents a remarkable cache of previously unpublished papers, including forty-five essays which Hopkins produced during his undergraduate career at Oxford (1863-1867), only seven of which were reproduced in the 1959 edition of Journals and Papers. Topics range from Platonic philosophy to theories of the imagination, from ancient history to then-contemporary politics andvoting rights. Also included are notes from a commonplace book, a remarkable 'dialogue' about aesthetics (featuring a fictionalized John Ruskin figure), and the lecture notes Hopkins prepared in the winter of 1868 while teaching at John Henry Newman's Oratory School in Birmingham-writings in which he explores, forthe first time, the theories of inscape and instress so central to his poetic practice. The edition is fully annotated and provides a detailed introduction that situates historically Hopkins's academic and creative efforts.The twelve notebooks represent Hopkins's intellectual and aesthetic development while studying with some of the greatest scholars of the era (Benjamin Jowett, Walter Pater, and T. H. Green), as well as the ethical and spiritual anxieties he wrestled with while deciding to convert to Catholicism (John Henry Newman received him into the Church in 1866). Hopkins never wrote to please his tutors or the university professors-he wrote vividly and searchingly in response to the challenges theypresented. Whether evaluating Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, the role of 'neutral' England in the American civil war, or the comparative merits of classical sculpture, his first instinct was always to frame the difficult questions involved and work towards a 'counter' argument.