Eight modern essayists / William Smart.

Forty-one essays by E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, George Orwell, E.B. White, Lewis Thomas, James Baldwin, Joan Didion, with an appendix on style.

Notes on the English character -- My wood Voltaire's laboratory -- Not listening to music -- What I believe / E.M. Forster; Professions for women -- How should one read a book? The Death of a moth -- A Sketch of the past / Virginia Woolf; Adolf -- Hymns in a man's life -- Insouciance -- Making pictures -- Nottingham and the mining countryside -- Why the novel matters / D.H. Lawrence; Shooting an Elephant -- Marrakech -- How the poor die -- Why I write -- Politics and the English language / George Orwell; The World of tomorrow -- Walden -- Once more to the lake -- Afternoon of an American boy -- Death of a pig -- The Ring of time / E.B. White; Autonomy -- A Fear of Pheromones -- On Cloning a human being -- On Natural death -- On Embryology -- Medical lessons from history / Lewis Thomas; Notes of a native son -- Equal in Paris -- Stranger in the village / James Baldwin; On Morality -- Goodbye to all that -- On Going home -- On the morning after the sixties -- Why I write -- On the road / Joan Didion; Of Style / Ben Johnson -- A Letter to a young gentleman / Jonathan Swift -- Of Familiar style / William Hazlitt -- On the writing of essays / Alexander Smith -- On the Fascination of style / F.L. Lucas.