essays literature

Hardcover. Edinburgh, John Grant, Revised/Reprint, 1896, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 301 pages. Cloth boards. Previous owners bookplate on front inside cover. No dust jacket.

Hardcover. Athens GA, University of Georgia Press, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket with mild edgewear, 253 pages. Considered depraved by some and magnificent by others, Lady Chatterley's Lover was a genetic controversy the world over, inspiring landmark judicial opinions. After 50 years it's literary reputation is not yet secure -- the scent of pornography still clings. In DH Lawrence's" Lady " outstanding critics, assessing the work from a different perspective, reveal vast importance to her literature and our culture. Edited by Michael Squires and Dennis Jackson, these essays offer vigorous and perceptive readings that see the novel as it could not have been viewed at the time when it first appeared.

Hardcover. NY, Putnam, 1st , 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. 259 pages. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. With these interwoven autobiographical essays, Geoffrey Wolff, author of the acclaimed The Duke of Deception, recounts the moral (and immoral) education of a writer, friend, husband, and father, as he offers his spirited, elegant, and deeply felt observations on an extraordinary life: from wildly dysfunctional childhood Christmases to a concupiscent career teaching literature in Istanbul; from a victory over the chaos of drink to a life-affirming surrender to the majesty of the Matterhorn; and from a foundering friendship to the transcending love of family.

Hardcover. Los Angeles, Rare Bird Books, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 312 pages. The highlight of Desolation Peak is the journal Kerouac kept, starkly revealing the depth of his poverty, the extremity of his mood swings, and the ongoing arguments with himself over the future direction of his life, his writing, and faith. Along with the journal, he worked on a series of projects, including "Ozone Park," another installment of the Duluoz Legend beginning in 1943, after his discharge from the Navy; "The Martin Family," an intended sequel to The Town and the City, and "Desolation Adventure," a series of sketches that became part 1 of Desolation Angels. In writing it, Kerouac was re-committing himself to his more experimental, then-unpublishable style, declaring in the journal that "the form of the future is no-form." Also included in Collected Writings is "The Diamondcutter of Perfect Knowing," Kerouac's "transliteration" of the Diamond Sutra, his "Desolation Blues" and "Desolation Pops" poems, and assorted prose sketches and dreams. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Wakefield RI, Moyer Bell, 2nd pr., 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY O'CONNOR on the half-title page. O'Connor, who has had a career as an editor at Washington Square Press, Pinnacle and Popular Library, and as a cultural critic for Variety and on radio and TV (he's now a ski instructor in Vermont), originally broadcast these essays on WBAI Radio in New York City.

Hardcover. NY, New Directions, 1st, 1969, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, lightly wrinkled dust jacket that's unclipped. This is Snyder's first essay/excerpt collection, "Earth House Hold" being a play on the roots of the word "ecology. 143 pages. Dust jacket with foxing, tanning. No markings.

Softcover. NY, Columbia University Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 395 pages. The essays gathered here, in addition to those by editors Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloob, are written by leading scholars of Asian cultures--among them Donald Keene, Peter Awn, Barbara Stoler Miller, Ainslie Embree, Burton Watson, C.T. Hsia, Paul Anderer, and others. They introduce classics from the Islamic, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese traditions, providing entree to texts which have emerged as monuments of Asian thought and literature. Among the works discussed are the Qu'ran, the philosophy of history of Ibn Khaldun, the Upanishads, the epic Mahabarata, the philosopher Mencius, the Lotus Sutra, T'and Poetry, the Tale of Genji, and the poet Basho.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1905, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth stamped in gilt, 3 colors. Beautiful gilt and sihouette vignette of the London skyline. 80 black and white drawings by Joseph Pennell. Top edge gilt. A collection of periodical pieces written over a span of thirty years by James, all about his travels in England. Name and date on front fly leaf, otherwise a clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1938, 522 pages. Hardcover. Green tweed cloth covers with black & gilt printed design to cover & spine. Dust jacket with moderate toning, now protected with a plastic cover. Light toning & several illustrations in bw throughout. A clean copy.

Hardcover. Little Rock AK, Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 358 pages. For those who care about literature or simply love a good laugh (or both), Charles Portis has long been one of America's most admired novelists. His 1968 novel True Grit is fixed in the contemporary canon, and four more have been hailed as comic masterpieces. Now, for the first time, his other writings--journalism, travel stories, short fiction, memoir, and even a play--have been brought together in Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany, his first new book in more than twenty years. All the familiar Portis elements are here: picaresque adventures, deadpan humor, an expert eye for detail and keen ear for the spoken word, and encounters with oddball characters both real and imagined. The collection encompasses the breadth of his fifty-year writing career, from his gripping reportage of the civil rights movement for the New York Herald Tribune to a comic short story about the demise of journalism in the 21st century. New to even the most ardent fan is his three-act play, Delray's New Moon, performed onstage in 1996 and published here for the first time.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 134 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY HALL ON BOOKPLATE ON FRONT END PAPER. Gutter crack on page 132, otherwise tight copy. Newspaper clipping laid in.

Hardcover. NY, D. Appleton & Company, 1st, 1852, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with black title to front board and to spine. 261 pages, publisher's ads. Contains of an early review of Harriet Beecher Stowe's bestselling novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, as well as accounts of travels to the Nubian Desert and Arctic, a history of Spanish literature, and literary essays and reviews of works by Dickens, Tennyson, Thackeray, and Hawthorne. Mild foxing, some light chipping and wear to spine.

Hardcover. Knoxville TN, University of Tennessee Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 235 pages. Evelyn Scott was a significant literary figure in American letters of the 1920s and 1930s, an important contributor in the experimental forms and techniques of the modernist movement. She wrote and published in many genres -- the novel, short fiction, poetry, memoir, criticism, and drama. Since that time, Scott's work has been forgotten by most readers and critics, and her reputation as an important writer of her day has been obscured. This collection, which features an introduction and thirteen critical essays, is the first volume to focus on Scott's work rather than her intriguing yet troubled life and initiates a long-needed examination of Scott's innovations in fiction, memoir, and other genres. The various essays take diverse critical approaches to Scott's canon, including her best-known works -- Escapade and The Wave -- and explore her views on topics such as women, politics, religion, art, and the South. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Chicago, University Of Chicago Press, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 236 pages. A butler school in Houston, a livestock auction in Little Rock, a home for "frozen guys" in California, JFK's humidor in Manhattan--all are jumping off points for Friedman's baleful and sharply satirical scrutiny of American life and behavior in the second half of the twentieth century. Travel with Friedman from Harlem to Hollywood, from Port-au-Prince to Etta's Eat Shop in Chicago. In these pieces, which were published in literary and mass-circulation magazines from the 1960s to the 1990s, you'll meet such luminaries as Castro and Clinton, Natalie Wood and Clint Eastwood, and even Friedman's friends Irwin Shaw, Nelson Algren, and Mario Puzo. Friedman is a master of the essay, whether the subject is crime reporting ("Lessons of the Street"), Hollywood shenanigans ("My Life among the Stars"), or his outrageous adventures as the editor of pulp magazines (the classic "Even the Rhinos Were Nymphos"). We could sing his praises as a journalist, humorist, and social critic. But, as Buckley tells us, being Bruce Jay Friedman is enough. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Ticknor and Fields, 1st, 1863, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 319 pages. Portrait of Thoreau on frontispiece with tissue guard. First edition, one of 1,558 copies printed. Original publisher's blue-green pebbled cloth with blind-stamped borders and center wreath. Spine lettered in gilt. Brown-coated end papers. Ten essays including a 33 page biographical sketch by Emerson of Thoreau and nine essays by Thoreau, among them the famous "Walking."

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, unclipped dust jacket with mild tanning, 254 pages. Bound in bright blue cloth in white dust jacket printed in red and black. First Printing stated. A collection of Isherwood's writings from nearly four decades. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Basic Books, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 337 pages, in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Essays by the New York City cultural critic; examines the work of artists, filmmakers and writers ranging from Anton Chekov to J. K. Rowling, including Stanley Kubrick, The Sopranos, Sex in the City, John Updike, Norman Mailer, and Barbara Kingsolver. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Norfolk UK, Black Dog Books, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 310 pages. Hardcover. Author signed. B/w illustrations throughout. Dust jacket front flap price clipped. Clean inside and out. From the dust jacket front flap: "These essays, written over a 30-year period and published to celebrate the Benson Medal for Literature awarded to Ronald Blythe in 2006, offer Blythe's lingering comment on his life as a writer."

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st US, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 112 pages. Tanning to rear endpapers otherwise clean, very good in an unclipped dust jacket.

Hardcover. London, Hutchinson & Co, 1st, 1951, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 128 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Brick cloth covered boards with gilt titles to spine. Light foxing to endpapers. Frontis illustration, Eden Phillpotts, in black & white. Toning throughout, tight binding with clean pages throughout.

Hardcover. Athens OH, Ohio University Press, 2nd pr., 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 373 pages. Editors Groth and Castronovo have chosen from Wilson's previously uncollected works to present materials illuminating his growth as a literary critic and writer. The works are arranged chronologically, beginning with essays published in the High School Record in 1911 proceeding to works penned for the Nation, New Republic, and the New Yorker in the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties, and winding up with an acceptance speech delivered by Wilson in 1966. Among the subjects of the essays are underrated pleasures (including Edith Wharton, satin breeches, and the human body), overrated experiences (such as afternoon tea, youth, summer, and weddings), and literary critiques, both admiring and scathing. Many libraries already own the source periodicals, but this collection includes a few items that would be difficult to obtain.

Hardcover. Peacham VT, The Perpetua Press, 1st, 2002, Hardcover in the publisher's cream-colored linen over boards with spine and upper board gilt-stamped black leather labels. No dust jacket, as issued. 88 pages, only 500 copies printed. A collection of interviews done with Shaw from 1924 - 1945. Bright and clean copy.

Hardcover. NY/Oxford UK, Routledge, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in pictorial boards, 190 pages. This book examines Gore Vidal's lifelong engagement with the ancient world. Incorporating material from his novels, essays, screenplays and plays, it argues that his interaction with antiquity was central to the way in which he viewed himself, his writing, and his world. Divided between the three primary subjects of his writing - sex, politics, and religion - this book traces the lengthy dialogue between Vidal and antiquity over the course of his sixty-year career. Broughall analyses Vidal's portrayals of the ancient past in novels such as Julian (1964), Creation (1981) and Live from Golgotha (1992). He also shows how classical literature inspired Vidal's other fiction, such as The City and the Pillar (1948), Myra Breckinridge (1968), and his Narratives of Empire (1967-2000) novels. Beyond his fiction, Broughall examines the ways in which antiquity influenced Vidal's careers as a playwright, an essayist and a satirist, and evaluates the influence of classical authors and their works upon him. Clean copy.

Hardcover. San Marino CA, The Huntington Library, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 326 pages, b&w illustrations. Early modern European governments and their subjects had difficulty agreeing to laws governing behavior on the sea - an environment that featured watery borders, rampant piracy, the threat of free trade, and the large-scale transportation of human cargo. The essays in this volume explore how the exploitation of the oceans changed the institution of slavery, long-distance trade, property crime, the environment, literature, and memory from medieval times to the nineteenth century. Clean copy.