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The Oxford Book of Essays » (New Edition)

Book cover image of The Oxford Book of Essays by John Gross

Authors: John Gross
ISBN-13: 9780199556557, ISBN-10: 0199556555
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Date Published: December 2008
Edition: New Edition

Author Biography: John Gross

John Gross is the author of The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters (1973) and editor of The Oxford Book of Aphorisms (1983) and The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes (2006), among other publications. He was editor of the Times Literary Supplement from 1974 to 1981, and is currently theatre critic of the Sunday Telegraph.

Book Synopsis

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.

	Acknowledgements
	Introduction
	Of Truth	1
	Of Revenge	3
	Of Boldness	4
	Of Innovations	5
	Of Masques and Triumphs	6
	A Chambermaid	9
	A Fair and Happy Milkmaid	10
	An Antiquary	12
	A Good Old Man	13
	A Pot-Poet	14
	How the Distempers of these Times should affect wise Men	15
	On Dreams	17
	Of Anger	21
	A Degenerate Noble	23
	Of Charity, or the Love of God	25
	Of Avarice	27
	'Chaucer' (from Preface to the Fables)	29
	Good Manners and Good Breeding	34
	A Meditation Upon a Broom-Stick	39
	Thoughts in Westminster Abbey	41
	The Royal Exchange	43
	Sir Roger in Westminster Abbey	46
	Sir Roger at Vauxhall	50
	On Recollections of Childhood	53
	Upon Affectation	57
	The Levee	61
	The Poor and their Betters	63
	Dignity and Uses of Biography	68
	Conversation	72
	Debtors' Prisons (1)	75
	Debtors' Prisons (2)	77
	Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature	81
	On Dress	87
	A Little Great Man	91
	On National Prejudices	94
	On War	98
	Dream Children	104
	from On Some of the Old Actors	107
	On the Pleasure of Hating	112
	Brummelliana	122
	Getting Up on Cold Mornings	126
	The Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth	131
	from Signs of the Times	136
	from Lord Clive	149
	On Secrecy	164
	Secular Knowledge not a Principle of Action	166
	The Conservative	171
	The Haunted Mind	187
	'Bentham and Coleridge' (from Coleridge)	192
	City of London Churches	196
	Autour de mon Chapeau	207
	The Plumber	217
	Night and Moonlight	221
	The Philosophy of Christianity	229
	Thomas Carlyle	239
	Heine and the Philistines (from Heinrich Heine)	242
	from Evolution and Ethics	247
	Dull Government	252
	Talking about our Troubles	257
	from Autobiography	259
	On Knowing what Gives us Pleasure	263
	Thoughts of God	266
	Sandro Botticelli	270
	Wasps	278
	Disintroductions	282
	The Ph.D. Octopus	285
	from London	293
	Under the Early Stars	303
	The Acorn-Gatherer	305
	Aes Triplex	309
	'The True Critic' (from The Critic as Artist)	317
	Sir George Grove	320
	The Censor of Plays	326
	A Visit to Walt Whitman	330
	William James	336
	Intellectual Ambition	341
	Intuitive Morality	342
	Cordova	346
	On the Departure of a Guest	348
	On Being Modern-Minded	351
	'A Clergyman'	356
	The Dream	362
	A Defence of Penny Dreadfuls	372
	On Sandals and Simplicity	377
	Invective	381
	My Own Centenary	383
	Creighton	386
	The Libido for the Ugly	392
	Funeral March	396
	Evening Parties	400
	Harriette Wilson	404
	The Death of the Moth	409
	Finnegans Wake	412
	The Greatest Victorian	414
	Insouciance	420
	What There is to See at the Zoo	424
	Marie Lloyd	428
	Symmetry and Repetition	431
	The Necessary Enemy	434
	The Sterner Sex	439
	The Colloid and the Crystal	444
	On Being the Right Size	452
	Meditation on the Moon	458
	My Own Ten Rules for a Happy Marriage	462
	The Toy Farm	468
	The Case for Xanthippe	472
	A Preface to Persius	480
	About Myself	486
	Our Half-Hogarth	489
	The Ant-Lion	495
	Reflections on Gandhi	501
	Well-Informed Circles ... and How to Move in Them	510
	The Lost Childhood	515
	Adams at Ease	520
	A New Westminster	528
	The Faces of Buddha	532
	The Snout	536
	What If -? English versus German and French	544
	In Search of Nib-Joy	548
	Young Hunger	551
	Churchill and Roosevelt (from Winston Churchill in 1940)	555
	To Err is Human	560
	Bad Poets	564
	Thomas Hobbes	566
	The Apotheosis of Martin Luther King	572
	The Gangster as Tragic Hero	581
	The Homburg Hat	587
	The People's Victor	591
	Movies on Television	595
	The Marquis and the Madame	607
	The Savage Seventh	611
	The Crisp at the Crossroads	617
	Stranger in the Village	621
	Robert Graves and the Twelve Caesars	634
	La Paz	641
	A Visit from Royalty	646
	Is It Alas, Yorick?	651
	Columbus and Crusoe	656
	The Bankrupt Man	660
	At the Dam	663
	About Face	666
	A Blizzard of Tiny Kisses	673