essays literature

Hardcover. Nashville TN, Vanderbilt University Press, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 271 pages. The first English translation of the last work of Gogol to be published during his lifetime. The only important nonfiction prose work of the Russian novelist, the*e thirty-two critical essays, written in the form of personal letters, define Gogol's views on religion, morality, and aesthetics and provide a key to the underlying motives and messages of his earlier fiction, including Dead Souls and The Inspector General. Translated from the Russian by Jesse Zeldin.

Softcover. San Francisco, City Lights, 6th pr., 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 255 pages. A compilation of Charles Bukowski's underground articles from his column "Notes of a Dirty Old Man" appears here in book form. Bukowski's reasoning for self-describing himself as a 'dirty old man' rings true in this book. "People come to my door?too many of them really?and knock to tell me Notes of a Dirty Old Man turns them on. A bum off the road brings in a gypsy and his wife and we talk . . . . drink half the night. A long distance operator from Newburgh, N.Y. sends me money. She wants me to give up drinking beer and to eat well. I hear from a madman who calls himself 'King Arthur' and lives on Vine Street in Hollywood and wants to help me write my column. A doctor comes to my door: 'I read your column and think I can help you. I used to be a psychiatrist.' I send him away . . .""Bukowski writes like a latter-day Celine, a wise fool talking straight from the gut about the futility and beauty of life . . ." ?Publishers Weekly. Mild shelf wear, clean copy.

Hardcover. Colbyville, Vt., Silver Print Press, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 162 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. B&w photography throughout. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Softcover. Chicago, Henry Regnery, reprint, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 323 pages. "Occasions and Protests offers a collection of articles, protests, and affirmations written over the last thirty years by one of the most astute, eloquent, and concerned observers ever to happen the upon the American scene." The perpetual conflict between the individual and the system is his subject. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. New York, Viking Press, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 274 pages. Faint foxing to upper edge of brodart protected dust jacket and to top edge, else a very nice, tight copy.

Hardcover. Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Blue cloth covers with embossed design, gilt lettering on spine. Writings from the author best known for "The Story of an African Farm". 214 pages, no markings. Owner's small embossed stamp on front fly leaf.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday , 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 118 pages, b&w photographs by John Ranard. A very clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, reprint, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn and lightly soiled dust jacket, unclipped with $4.50 price. Essays on a wide range of topics, including the assassination of Gandhi, Vassar, anti-Semitism, the Communist party, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, etc. No first printing indicated so assumed 2nd pr. No markings.

Hardcover. US, Getty Publications, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 352 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Documents the burgeoning Southern Californian post-war art scene, with several essays following a more or less chronological order, and hundreds of illustrations of artworks, but also of art people (a wonderful 1963 photograph of Marcel Duchamp playing chess with a naked Eve Babitz in front of a replica of his Large Glass in Pasadena, photographs of artists working in their studios, etc). Some names are well known, others less so, but it is the versatility, the creativity and, above all, the richness and depth of this LA art scene that strike the reader-viewer through these richly illustrated pages. The birth of a genuine pop art in California (thanks to some of the most gifted artdealers in the US), of conceptual art, the creation of a new way of making sculpture, all those aspects are tackled in an informative and erudite (sometimes too erudite, though...)text that makes this book a more than valuable addition to the literature on post-war American art.

Hardcover. New York, Knopf, Reprint, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 129 pages. Color illustrations by James McMullan. Dust jacket unclipped with slight rubbing. Otherwise, clean and tight copy.

Hardcover. University Press of Kentucky, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 338 pages. Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, author of nine collections of poetry and three volumes of influential essays, is regarded by many as the greatest Irish poet since Yeats. Passage to the Center is the most comprehensive critical treatment to date on Heaney's poetry and the first to study Heaney's entire body of work (including his recent volumes. It is also the first to examine the poems from the perspective of religion, one of Heaney's guiding preoccupations. According to Tobin, the growth of Heaney's poetry may be charted through the recurrent figure of "the center," a key image in the relationship that evolved over time between the poet and his inherited place, an evolution that involved the continual re-evaluation and re-vision of imaginative boundaries. In a way that previous studies have not, Tobin's work examines Heaney's poetry in the context of modernist and postmodernist concerns about the desacralizing of civilization and provides a challenging engagement with the work of a living master. Clean copy.

Softcover. Philadelphia, Owlswick Press, 1st pbk, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 180 pages. Foreword by L. Sprague de Camp, with essays, bibliography and index. Four b&w plates by Tim Kirk. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Longmans Green & Co., 1st US, 1947, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a chipped, worn dust jacket, 303 pages."Charles Pierre Peguy (1873- 1914) was a noted French poet, essayist, and editor. His two main philosophies were socialism and nationalism, but by 1908 at the latest, after years of uneasy agnosticism, he had become a believing but non-practicing Roman Catholic. From that time, Catholicism strongly influenced his works. From his earliest years, he was influenced by socialism. He joined the Socialist Party in 1895. From 1900 until his death in 1914, he was the main contributor to and the editor of the literary magazine Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine, which at first supported the Socialist Party director Jean Jaures. However, Peguy ultimately ended this support after he began viewing Jaures as a traitor to the nation and to socialism. In the Cahiers, Peguy published not only his own essays and poetry, but also works by important contemporary authors such as Romain Rolland. His free-verse poem, "Portico of the Mystery of the Second Virtue", has gone through more than 60 editions in France."Charles Pierre Peguy (1873- 1914) was a noted French poet, essayist, and editor. His two main philosophies were socialism and nationalism, but by 1908 at the latest, after years of uneasy agnosticism, he had become a believing but non-practicing Roman Catholic. From that time, Catholicism strongly influenced his works. From his earliest years, he was influenced by socialism. He joined the Socialist Party in 1895. From 1900 until his death in 1914, he was the main contributor to and the editor of the literary magazine Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine, which at first supported the Socialist Party director Jean Jaures. However, Peguy ultimately ended this support after he began viewing Jaures as a traitor to the nation and to socialism. In the Cahiers, Peguy published not only his own essays and poetry, but also works by important contemporary authors such as Romain Rolland. His free-verse poem, "Portico of the Mystery of the Second Virtue", has gone through more than 60 editions in France.

Hardcover. NY, The Viking Press, 1st, 1936, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, bound in black cloth with design of a phoenix on the front cover. No dust jacket. First edition with Published in October 1936 on copyright page and no additional printings noted. Fading to the spine. 852 pages. A complete collection of D H Lawrence's unpublished essays. Discoloration to black cloth along bottom of front cover and spine, Interior is bright and clean.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. First edition of this collection of pieces penned in the first half of the 1970s, by four-time Pulitzer nominee. Included are reflections on man and nature in rural Georgia ("Travels in Georgia"), a profile of an Arkansas horseman hoping to make it big in an important horse race ("Ruidoso"), a quest to discover the true location that inspired the "Marvin Gardens" square in the Monopoly game, ("In Search of Marvin Gardens"), and more. Very bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Viking Press, 1st, 1933, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket, 111 pages. A comprehensive analysis of the works of the famous British author, D. H. Lawrence. The book delves deep into Lawrence's literary career, examining his novels, poems, and essays, and exploring the themes that are central to his writing. Horace Gregory, a renowned literary critic and poet, provides a detailed analysis of Lawrence's works, exploring the author's unique style and his use of language, imagery, and symbolism. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper and Brothers, 1st US, 1882, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with gilt stamping. 249 pages plus publisher's ads Candid opinions, in a series of essays on literature, music, fashion and character by the author of "John Halifax Gentleman". 'If I say somewhat hard things, I beg my readers to believe me that it is not out of a hard heart, careless of giving pain, but a sad heart, knowing pain must be given.' (Preliminary.) Uncommon. Mild spotting to covers otherwise clean, very good.

Hardcover. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 676 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, tight copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Nice copy.

Hardcover. NY, John Wiley & Son, 1867, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth with gilt design and lettering on spine, beveled cloth boards, later printing (1867), 349 pages, top edge gilt. A compilation of 'hidden treasures' within Ruskin's writings. A must for anyone who appreciates the writings of John Ruskin. Some light stain to top margin of first 30 pages, not affecting text, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Humanities Press, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 276 pages. George Lukacs on Appearance and Essence, Erwin Pracht on Socialist Realism, S. Petrov on Realism, Robert Weimann on point of view in fiction, B. G. Zhantieva on Joyce's Ulysses, Werner Mittzenzwei on the Brecht-Lukacs debate, and five other major essays. Clean copy.

Softcover. UK, Oxford University Press, Revised Ed., 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 384 pages. Published here for the first time is much of a final and long-anticipated work on the philosophy of history by the great Oxford philosopher and historian R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943). The original text of this uncompleted work has only recently been discovered and is accompanied here by Collingwood's shorter writings on historical knowledge and inquiry. Besides containing entirely new ideas, these incredible writings discuss many of the issues which Collingwood famously raised in The Idea of History and in his Autobiography. This book also includes two conclusions written by Collingwood, which were eventually revised and published as The Idea of Nature. and a lengthy editorial introduction that puts Collingwood's writings in their context and discusses the philosophical questions they initiate. A landmark publication, this work will appeal not only to those studying Collingwood but also to anyone broadly curious about philosophy of history. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, New Directions, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In English at last, Borges's erudite and entertaining lectures on English literature from Beowulf to Oscar Wilde. Writing for Harper's Magazine, Edgardo Krebs describes Professor Borges: "A compilation of the twenty-five lectures Borges gave in 1966 at the University of Buenos Aires, where he taught English literature. Starting with the Vikings' kennings and Beowulf and ending with Stevenson and Oscar Wilde, the book traverses a landscape of 'precursors,'cross-cultural borrowings, and genres of expression, all connected by Borges into a vast interpretive web. This is the most surprising and useful of Borges's works to have appeared posthumously." Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a violet dust jacket with light fading to spine, 232 pages. A collection of essays exploring all aspects on a controversial English poet, the 17th century libertine, The Earl of Rochester. Different sections focus on sexual politics, on the poetry of intellect, and on Rochester and his contemporaries. Name, date and light pencil notations on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York, Knopf, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 219 pages. Clean, bright copy. "I doubt very much that I'm the only person who's finding it more and more difficult to want to read or write novels," David Shields acknowledges in Reality Hunger, then seeks to understand how the conventional literary novel has become as lifeless a form as the mass market bodice-ripper. Shields provides an ars poetica for writers and other artists who, exhausted by the artificiality of our culture, "obsessed by real events because we experience hardly any," are taking larger and larger pieces of the real world and using them in their work. Reality Hunger is made of 600-odd numbered fragments, many of them quotations from other sources, some from Shields's own books, but none properly sourced--the project being not a treasure hunt or a con but a good-faith presentation of what literature might look like if it caught up to contemporary strategies and devices used in the other arts, and allowed for samples (that is, quotation from art and from the world) to revivify existing forms. Shields challenges the perceived superiority of the imagination and exposes conventional literary pieties as imitation writing, the textual equivalent of artificial flavoring, sleepwalking, and small talk. I can't name a more necessary or a more thrilling book.