Product Overview
For more than four hundred years, the personalessay has been one of the richest and most vibrantof all literary forms. Distinguished from thedetached formal essay by its friendly, conversationaltone, its loose structure, and its drive towardcandor and self-disclosure, the personal essayseizes on the minutiae of daily life-vanities,fashions, foibles, oddballs, seasonal rituals, love anddisappointment, the pleasures of solitude,reading, taking a walk -- to offer insight into thehuman condition and the great social and politicalissues of the day. The Art of the PersonalEssay is the first anthology tocelebrate this fertile genre. By presenting more thanseventy-five personal essays, including influentialforerunners from ancient Greece, Rome, and theFar East, masterpieces from the dawn of thepersonal essay in the sixteenth century, and a wealth ofthe finest personal essays from the last fourcenturies, editor Phillip Lopate, himself anacclaimed essayist, displays the tradition of thepersonal essay in all its historical grandeur, depth,and diversity.
