The edition provides in popular form the amplest selection available of Johnson’s essays, ranging from his great moral pieces to the valuable essays on literary criticisms. The text is that of the authoritative Yale Edition and includes full annotation. An introduction by W.J. Bate provides a concise summary of the publication history of the essays and probes in detail the moral vision that pervades most of them.Mr. Bate is Lowell Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University and joint editor of Volumes II-V of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson.

    Described by William Dean Howells as a writer whose genius seemed to "spring to life fully armed," Crane also produced impressive free-form verse. This excellent anthology contains nearly all of Crane's verse, including two complete books of poems: The Black Riders and Other Lines, which garnered immediate praise; and War Is Kind, ablaze with vivid imagery. Here, too, are rewarding selections from his uncollected poetic works. Thought by some critics to anticipate the Imagist movement of the twentieth century, Crane's poems are usually brief, cadenced, and rhymeless, rich in drama and symbolism, and spiritually penetrating.

    Chesnutt writes of the black search for identity in the period between the Civil War and the turn of the century

    This digital edition was derived from ACLS Humanities E-Book's (http://www.humanitiesebook.org) online version of the same title.