Oxford Book of American Essays

From Benjamin Franklin's witty observations on gout to Henry James's nuanced reflections on the art of fiction, this collection traces the American essay through its most luminous century. Compiled by Brander Matthews, the anthology gathers thirty-two voices that shaped a nation's intellectual character: Emerson thinking in circles about self-reliance, Whitman singing the body electric, Theodore Roosevelt bellowing about manhood and the strenuous life. The subjects stagger in their variety: insects born to live a single day, old bachelors contemplating their lonely lots, the odes of Horace rendered into English verse. What unites these pieces is the essayist's ancient art of making a universe from a passing thought. Here is America talking to itself, sometimes eloquently, sometimes curmudgeonly, always with absolute conviction. For readers who miss the essay's quiet pleasures, the unhurried argument, the personal tone, the marriage of wisdom and wit, this anthology resurrects a form that once ruled the literary breakfast table.