Best of
Essays

1948

Here Is New York


E.B. White - 1948
    White's stroll around Manhattan remains the quintessential love letter to the city, written by one of America's foremost literary figures. The New York Times has named Here is New York one of the ten best books ever written about the metropolis, and The New Yorker calls it "the wittiest essay, and one of the most perceptive, ever done on the city.

Painting as a Pastime


Winston S. Churchill - 1948
    Throughout his life, Churchill painted to relieve his mind from the demands of leadership—and to stave off depression.Included in this volume are Churchill’s meditations on painting as a salve for the spirit and an important method of relaxation—particularly for people under considerable stress over a long period of time. In addition, it includes 18 reprints of Churchill’s original work in oil, giving the reader a window into the little-known creative and artistic talent of this prominent figure in contemporary history.

Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp


Józef Czapski - 1948
    In a series of lectures, Czapski described the arc and import of Proust’s masterpiece, sketched major and minor characters in striking detail, and movingly evoked the work’s originality, depth, and beauty. Eric Karpeles has translated this brilliant and ­altogether unparalleled feat of the critical imagination into English for the first time, and in a thoughtful introduction he brings out how, in reckoning with Proust’s great meditation on memory, Czapski helped his fellow officers to remember that there was a world apart from the world of the camp. Proust had staked the art of the novelist against the losses of a lifetime and the imminence of death. Recalling that triumphant wager, unfolding, like Sheherazade, the intricacies of Proust’s world night after night, Czapski showed to men at the end of their tether that the past remained present and there was a future in which to hope.Includes an 8-page color insert of Czapski’s lecture notes.

Moment And Other Essays


Virginia Woolf - 1948
    "[Woolf's] essays...are lighter and easier than her fiction, and they exude information and pleasure.... Everything she writes about novelists, like everything she writes about women, is fascinating.... Her well-stocked, academic, masculine mind is the ideal flint for the steel of her uncanny intuitions to strike on" (Cyril Connolly, New Yorker). Editorial Note by Leonard Woolf.

The Portable Swift


Jonathan Swift - 1948
    1699Thoughts on various subjects, moral and divertingThoughts on religionHints towards an essay on conversationFrom Journal to StellaThe Earl of WhartonThe art of political lyingThe rewards of MarlboroughTo Alexander PopeTo Esther Vanhomrigh (Vanessa)To John GayFrom The drapier's lettersTravels into several remote nations of the world ... by Lemuel Gulliver: - A voyage to Lilliput - A voyage to Brobdingnag - A voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan - A voyage to the country of the HouyhnhnmsOn the death of Mrs. Johnson (Stella)A vindication of Mr. Gay, and the Beggar's operaA modest proposalTo Viscount BolingbrokeTo John ArbuthnotOn poetry : a rhapsodyVerses on the death of Dr. Swift

Orwell's England


George Orwell - 1948
    Collected together for the first time, this volume includes the complete text of THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER - Orwell's vivid and impassioned documentary of unemployment and proletarian life - as well as Orwell's best writing on the political and social condition of England.

Literature and the Right to Death


Maurice Blanchot - 1948
    

Getting The Most Out of Life Anthology


Various - 1948
    

The Bugbear of Literacy


Ananda K. Coomaraswamy - 1948
    Other topics include East and West, reincarnation, democracy, and traditional metaphysics.1. Am I My Brother's Keeper? 2. The Bugbear of Litteracy 3. Paths that Lead to the Same Summit 4. Eastern Wisdom and Western Knowledge 5. East and West 6. 'Spiritual Paternity' and the 'Puppet Complex' 7. Gradation, Evolution, and Reincarnation8. The Bugbear of Democracy, Freedom and Equality