Book of English Essays

By W.E. Williams

Book Overview

Essayists: Francis Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Oliver Goldsmith, Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, Thomas De Quincey, Leigh Hunt, Robert Louis Stevenson, G.K. Chesterfield,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140431535
• ISBN13: 9780140431537
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: Viking Pr
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 5.5" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Classical English essays

This work contains essays by many of the greats of the English essay- writing tradition. Bacon,Jeremy Taylor Dryden, Lamb, Hazlitt, deQuincey, Aldous Huxley, V.S. Pritchett are among the writers. There are however great English essay writers , including the two greatest literary critics in the English language, Samuel Johnson and Coleridge whose work is not included. There is much profundity in the essays as they meditate on life, and quite often, on death. Dryden's survey of the tombs of Westminister is a sobering reflection on human mortality, as is Taylor's essay. Lamb's description of his long years of work in the counting- house and the way he comes to receive his pension , and live in his retirement is another serious reflection on the travails of the human condition. Huxley considers the particular kind of focus required to write tragedy , and contrasts it with a form of literature more inclusive of the rich variety of everyday life, the novel. Williams in his introduction emphasizes the role edification has in the essay. As he understands it the form is essentially one which aims to instruct us morally. Nonetheless he recognizes that Literature too aims to delight which many of these essays certainly do.