Selected Essays And Articles

Spanning more than forty years of work, this collection of essays, gathered from the author's previous collections--including Toward Reality, The Look of Things, and The Sense of Sight, among others--reflects on such topics as Jackson Pollock, museums, mass demonstratons, ideologies, philosophy, and more.

In her powerful opening essays - 'Fathers', 'Forefathers' and 'Ancestors' - A. S. Byatt considers the renaissance of the historical novel and discusses particularly the novel of wartime experience; the surprising variety of distant pasts that British writers have invented; and the new 'Darwinian novel'. These afford new readings of writers from Elizabeth Bowen and Henry Green to Anthony Burgess, William Golding and Muriel Spark, and other contemporary authors, including Penelope Fitzgerald, Julian Barnes, Martin Amis and Pat Barker. She also offers fascinating insight into her own translation of historical fact into fiction in the two novellas which make up Angels and Insects.

H.D’s writing continues to inspire generations of readers. Bringing together a number of never-before-published essays, this new collection of H.D.’s writings introduces her compelling perspectives on art, myth, and the creative process. While H.D. is best known for her elemental poetry, which draws heavily on the imagery of natural and ancient worlds, her critical writings remain a largely underexplored and unpublished part of her oeuvre. Crucial to understanding both the formative contexts surrounding her departure from Imagism following the First World War and her own remarkable creative vision, Notes on Thought and Vision, written in 1918, is one of the central works in this collection. H.D. guides her reader to the untamed shores of the Scilly Isles, where we hear of powerful, transformative experiences and of her intense relationship with the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci. The accompanying essays, many published here for the first time, help color H.D.’s astute critical engagement with the past, from the city of Athens and the poetry of ancient Greece. Like Letters to a Young Painter (2017), also published in the ekphrasis series, this collection is essential reading for anyone interested in the creative process.

Malleable Forms is a book of forty-seven essays, rich and broad in ideas and subjects as far-ranging as art, architecture, literature, family, place, dogs, spirituality, birds, rabbits, and whimsy. However it isn?t just about the subjects presented in the essays but the way in which Walsh has made connections within them. A piece, for example, that looked at the memoir of Sonic Youth?s Kim Gordon takes the reader on a trip that includes surprising links between Gordon and Ab Ex painter Robert Motherwell. Another essay finds correspondences among critics as disparate as Linda Nochlin, Dave Hickey, and John Berger. Another measures the poetic sensibilities of Rainer Maria Rilke, Cynthia Ozick and Vladimir Nabokov, and another describes the romantic tale of a courtship between a woman and a blue jay.For 30 years Meeka Walsh has been the Editor of Canada?s leading art magazine, ?Border Crossings?. A selection of her much admired essays published in each issue of that magazine have been selected for this substantial book. Noted international critic and art writer, Barry Schwabsky has written an introductory essay. The persistent engagement of memory winds through the book and resonant is EM Forster?s dictum, ?only connect?. Walsh makes her particular kind of connections throughout. What the collection reveals is that in being a uniquely astute reader and observer, Walsh becomes just such a writer.

George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times

A collection of stories and essays by the award-winning author of Dark Emu, showcasing his shimmering genius across a lifetime of work. This volume of Bruce Pascoe’s best and most celebrated stories and essays, collected here for the first time, traverses his long career and explores his enduring fascination with Australia’s landscape, culture and history. Featuring new fiction alongside Pascoe’s most revered and thought-provoking nonfiction – including from his modern classic Dark Emu – Salt distils the intellect, passion and virtuosity of his work. It’s time all Australians know the range and depth of this most marvellous of our writers. ‘Salt demonstrates why Bruce Pascoe’s voice is important to the country.’ —Kim Scott ‘A paradigm shift ... a wonderful expanse of thinking and storytelling ... In prose that is funny in one moment and devastating the next, Pascoe moves us from wry humour [to] the deep sadness that follows the wonder of discovering a history of richness and fullness deliberately obscured.’ —Marie Matteson, Readings