Complete Essays of John Galsworthy

Galsworthy wrote essays the way a painter composes portraits: every detail deliberate, every observation revealing. This collection demonstrates why he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. These are not the formal, argumentative essays of tradition but intimate sketches, vignettes of English life rendered with the narrative urgency of short fiction. He turns his attention to the subtleties of social interaction, thearchitecture of class, the small cruelties and kindnesses that compose a life. Whether writing about a country walk, a dinner party, or the view from a window, Galsworthy finds in the particular something achingly universal. His prose has the quality of controlled emotion - you feel the intensity beneath the measured sentences, the moral seriousness disguised as quiet observation. For readers who believe the essay is the most personal of forms, these pieces offer a master class in how to observe, how to select, how to make the reader see what you have seen.