The Penguin Book Of Twentieth Century Essays

This wide-ranging, authoritative collection of essays has been organised so that, decade by decade, a portrait of the 20th century from an Anglo-American perspective emerges. Collectively, the pieces offer both a commentary on the century's political ideas and movements and an insight into the preoccupations or modish concerns of any one period. Mixing landmarks in literary criticism with playful, self-referential pieces, and the momentous with the self-avowedly trivial, the collection keeps alive one of the great quarrels of the century: between 'high' and 'low' culture. Opening with G. K. Chersterton, the collection closes with a piece by Julian Barnes, taking in the likes of Martha Gellhorn, W. H. Auden, Hannah Arendt, Cyril Connolly, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion and John Carey along the way. In spite of the books documentary ambitions, the chief criterion for inclusion has been the quality of the writing.