A collection of essays by Orwell.Contents:Why I WriteSuch, Such Were the JoysWriters and LeviathanAnti-Semitism in BritainPoetry and the MicrophoneMarrakechLooking Back on the Spanish WarInside the WhaleEngland Your England

    

    e. cummings, Woodrow Wilson, H.L. Mencken, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Elinor Wylie, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Andre Malraux, Henry Miller, W.H. Auden, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti - these are among the figures in this panorama of the books and the ideas, the movements and the literary life of the twenties and thirties. In his discussion of these people - as well as in his comments on such topics as best sellers, Greenwich Village at the end of the twenties, and the Marxist view of literature - Edmund Wilson gives a rich and vivid picture of our recent cultural surroundings. Included in this collection are not only essays and reviews, but also dialogues, jeux d'esprit, satires, short sketches, and personal letters. But what comes through in this volume perhaps most forcefully of all is Mr. Wilson's tremendous quality as a writer. His career from the beginning is marked by a phenomenal independence of point of view and a style that is alive with detail and color and, at the same time, clear and direct. He is one of the most distinguished figures in American letters.