The collection will include pre-published essays that have gone viral, like “The White Industrial Savior Complex,” first published in The Atlantic.

    includes all the characteristic activities and interests of a people; Derby Day, Henley Regatta, Cowes, the twelfth of August, a cup final, the dog races, the pin table, the dart board, Wensleydale cheese, boiled cabbage cut into sections, beetroot in vinegar, 19th-century Gothic churches and the music of Elgar. The reader can make his own list ...'In this famous essay T. S. Eliot examines the principal uses of the word, and the conditions in which culture itself can flourish.'So rich in ideas that it is difficult to select two or three of them for comment ... it is a natural history of culture.' Sunday Times

    To a smaller yet no less passionate audience, Fowles is also known for having written The Tree, one of his few works of nonfiction. First published a generation ago, it is a provocative meditation on the connection between the natural world and human creativity, and a powerful argument against taming the wild. In it, Fowles recounts his own childhood in England and describes how he rebelled against his Edwardian father’s obsession with the “quantifiable yield” of well-pruned fruit trees and came to prize instead the messy, purposeless beauty of nature left to its wildest. The Tree is an inspiring, even life-changing book, like Lewis Hyde’s The Gift, one that reaffirms our connection to nature and reminds us of the pleasure of getting lost, the merits of having no plan, and the wisdom of following one’s nose wherever it may lead—in life as much as in art.

    H. Auden. This is no accident: McCall Smith has long been fascinated by Auden. Indeed, the novelist, best known for his No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, calls the poet not only the greatest literary discovery of his life but also the best of guides on how to live. In this book, McCall Smith has written a charming personal account about what Auden has done for him — and what he just might do for you.Part self-portrait, part literary appreciation, the book tells how McCall Smith first came across the poet's work in the 1970s, while teaching law in Belfast, a violently divided city where Auden's "September 1, 1939," a poem about the outbreak of World War II, strongly resonated. McCall Smith goes on to reveal how his life has related to and been inspired by other Auden poems ever since. For example, he describes how he has found an invaluable reflection on life's transience in "As I Walked Out One Evening," while "The More Loving One" has provided an instructive meditation on unrequited love. McCall Smith shows how Auden can speak to us throughout life, suggesting how, despite difficulties and change, we can celebrate understanding, acceptance, and love for others.An enchanting story about how art can help us live, this book will appeal to McCall Smith's fans and anyone curious about Auden.

    I forget things too. It makes me sad. Or it makes me the saddest. The sadness is not really about George W. or our American optimism; the sadness lives in the recognition that a life cannot matter.The award-winning poet Claudia Rankine, well known for her experimental multigenre writing, fuses the lyric, the essay, and the visual in this politically and morally fierce examination of solitude in the rapacious and media-driven assault on selfhood that is contemporary America. With wit and intelligence, Rankine strives toward an unprecedented clarity-of thought, imagination, and sentence-making-while arguing that recognition of others is the only salvation for ourselves, our art, and our government.Don't Let Me Be Lonely is an important new confrontation with our culture, with a voice at its heart bewildered by its inadequacy in the face of race riots, terrorist attacks, medicated depression, and the antagonism of the television that won't leave us alone.

    O'Hara’s untimely death in 1966 at the age of forty was, in the words of fellow poet John Ashbery, "the biggest secret loss to American poetry since John Wheelwright was killed.” This collection is a reissue of a volume first published by Grove Press in 1957, and it demonstrates beautifully the flawless rhythm underlying O'Hara’s conviction that to write poetry, indeed to live, "you just go on your nerve.”

    Then open up Young Americans, seems obvious what Jordan Castro is doing is revolutionary, he expressing emotions through poetry that have never been done before. The style, the way the subject matter is portrayed, even the meter, are new." - Noah Cicero (author of The Human War, The Insurgent, and more)“If you are a person who doesn’t really know what they are doing and you would like to read about another person who doesn’t really know what they are doing either, I recommend reading this poetry book. I enjoyed reading these poems. Or something.” - Chris Killen (author of The Bird Room)“I read these poems three times in one night, then put the duvet over my head and held my knees for a while. It’s good when something makes sense. I really really liked these poems.” - Ben Brooks (author of Grow Up)

    (Neil Gaiman)Drawn from Gaiman's trove of published speeches, poems and creative manifestos, 'ART MATTERS' is an embodiment of this remarkable multimedia artist's vision - an exploration of how reading, imagining, and creating can transform the world and our lives. 'ART MATTERS' brings together four of Gaiman's most beloved writings on creativity and artistry:❖1❖"CREDO", his remarkably concise and relevant manifesto on free expression, first delivered in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings❖2❖"MAKE GOOD ART", his famous 2012 commencement address delivered at the Philadelphia University of the Arts❖3❖"MAKING A CHAIR", a poem about the joys of creating something, even when the words won't come❖4❖"ON LIBRARIES", an impassioned argument for libraries that illuminates their importance to our future and celebrates how they foster readers and daydreamers.'ART MATTERS' is a stirring testament to the freedom of ideas that inspire us to make art in the face of adversity and dares us to choose to be bold.RUNNING TIME ⇰ 49mins.©2018 Neil Gaiman (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

    Roland is the last of his kind, a “gunslinger” charged with protecting whatever goodness and light remains in his world—a world that “moved on,” as they say. In this desolate reality—a dangerous land filled with ancient technology and deadly magic, and yet one that mirrors our own in frightening ways—Roland is on a spellbinding and soul-shattering quest to locate and somehow save the mystical nexus of all worlds, all universes: the Dark Tower. Now, in the graphic novel series Stephen King's The Dark Tower: Beginnings, originally published by Marvel Comics in single-issue form and creatively overseen by Stephen King himself, the full story of Roland's troubled past and coming-of-age is revealed. Sumptuously drawn by Jae Lee and Richard Isanove, plotted by longtime Stephen King expert Robin Furth, and scripted by New York Times bestselling author Peter David, Beginnings is an extraordinary and terrifying journey into Roland’s origins—ultimately serving as the perfect introduction for new readers to Stephen King’s modern literary classic The Dark Tower, while giving longtime fans thrilling adventures merely hinted at in his blockbuster novels. Roland Deschain of Gilead and his ka-tet of Cuthbert Allgood and Alain Johns may have finally returned home, but all is not well in the crown jewel of Mid-World. Roland has voluntarily kept the stolen evil seeing sphere nicknamed “Maerlyn's Grapefruit”—lost in his obsession with peering into its pinkish depths, despite the devastating toll it takes on his health...and what the young gunslinger sees within the glass heralds the darkest of nightmares. Meanwhile, all around him, danger lurks in every form, as the shocking and horrific machinations of Gilead’s sworn enemy, “the Good Man” John Farson, threatens all Roland holds dear and in ways he could never imagine...the cruel hand of fate about to push him inexorably closer along the path to the Dark Tower.

    As a writer, he produced The Importance of Being Earnest, one of the finest comedies in English, and other classic plays. His one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is still widely read, as is "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," a powerful poetic indictment of the degradation and inhumanity of prison life.This carefully edited volume focuses on Wilde's poetic legacy. In addition to the title poem, readers will find twenty-three other important works: "The Sphinx," "The Grave of Keats," "Requiescat," "Impression du Matin," "Panthea," "Silentium Amoris," "The Harlot's House," "To L. L." and others. While Wilde's fame rests mainly on his achievements as a dramatist and critic, these poems offer important clues to the themes and subjects that preoccupied him in his other works.

    This collection, born out of the tumultuous social and political landscape of the late sixties, is as intense, sensual, and compelling as Jim Morrison's persona was during the Doors' peak. His fast life and mysterious death remain controversial more than forty years later.

    This title collects selected works of Woolf, including: To the Lighthouse, Orlando, The Waves, Jacob's Room, A Room of One's Own, Three Guineas and Between the Acts

    [Penguin Readers Level 6]Autobiography.

    Lyrics of Leonard Cohen

    Best known for his command of the psychological fantasy story, De Quincey produced stories of the curious and obscure, but always with the traditional Romantic emphasis on feeling. His masterwork, "Confessions of an English Opium Eater" (1821), stemmed from his own laudanum addiction, and was followed by "Suspiria de Profundis", a collection of essays which continued to capture the same dark brilliance as in "Confessions". The collection was originally published in fragmentary form, and remained unfinished upon De Quincey's death in 1859. This edition includes "The Affliction of Childhood," a reflection on the death of the author's two sisters in childhood, "Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow," one of his best-known works about the Roman goddess of childbirth, and "The English Mail-Coach," on the "grandeur and power" of the English mail-coach system.