THE OXFORD BOOK OF ESSAYS

This is a first edition of the Oxford Book of Essays, compiled by the British academic John Gross. It was published in 1991, by Oxford University Press, and printed in the US.

It is 140 essays, beginning with Sir Francis Bacon and ending with Clive James. I attach photos of some of the contents.

This copy has not been read. It is medium blue boards with silver lettering on the cover and spine. The dust jacket is a painting; it is unclipped and has only a tiny amount of shelf-wear. It is 680 creamy white pages. Condition is perfect.

The following is from a review of it: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 favourites, 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.