Description
One of the most notable and attractive forms of English Literature is the essay, which, through the last three and a half centuries, has prospered abundantly in all periods. In his Introduction to this selection, first made for Pelicans in 1942 and now enlarged and reprinted, Mr. W. E. Williams points out that the Essay 'has a multitude of forms and manners, and scarcely any rules and regulations', and being so it has developed a wide variety of styles. One aim free from literary convention in this selection has been to show how, in successive ages of English Literature, the essay reflects in miniature the prose manners of the day.
The influence of the Press upon the essay is particularly emphasized by the inclusion of many examples taken from such famous eighteenth-century periodicals as the Spectator and the Tatler. Although many of the pieces chosen for this volume are such well known ones as Charles Lamb's In Praise of Chimney Sweepers or De Quincey's memorable commentary on an episode in Macbeth, an endeavour has been made to remind readers that Addison, for example, wrote other and better essays than the few which are usually anthologized. Modern writers such as Hilaire Belloc, J. B. Priestley, Aldous Huxley, Robert Lynd, Ivor Brown, Harold Nicolson, E. V. Lucas, and V. S. Pritchett are given a fair share of representation.
ISBN:BOOKOFENGLISH
