12 prose writers: Francis Bacon, Jonathan Swift, William Hazlitt, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Matthew Arnold, Mark Twain, E. M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, James Thurber, George Orwell, Mary McCarthy [and] James Baldwin / Edited by Burton L. Cooper.
Of simulation and dissimulation ; Of studies ; The idols of the mind / Francis Bacon -- On the death of Mrs. Johnson ; On the corruptions of style ; An argument against the abolishment of Christianity ; Gulliver explains warfare to the Houyhnhnms / Jonathan Swift -- On respectible people ; On the ignorance of the learned ; On the conduct of life; or advice to a schoolboy ; On familiar style / William Hazlitt -- from Self-reliance ; The over-soul ; Art / Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Hebraism and Hellenism ; Literature and science ; The grand style / Matthew Arnold -- Corn-pone opinions ; The turning point of my life ; Purchasing civic virtue ; Comments on the killing of 600 Moros ; Fenimore Cooper's literary offenses / Mark Twain -- Trooper Silas Tomkyn Comberbacke ; Anonymity : an inquiry ; The duty of society to the artist ; What I believe ; My wood / E.M. Forster -- The doors of perception ; Madness, badness, sadness ; Usually destroyed ; Tragedy and the whole truth / Aldous Huxley -- University days ; The watchers of the night ; Sex ex machina ; Which from "Ladies' and gentleman's guide to English usage" ; Only and one from "Ladies' and gentleman's guide to English usage" / James Thurber -- World War II and after from "Such, such were the joys" ; Shooting an elephant ; Marrakech ; Some thoughts on the common toad ; The art of Donald McGill / George Orwell -- Yonder peasant, who is he? ; America the beautiful : the humanist in the bathtub ; Settling the colonel's hash / Mary McCarthy -- Autobiographical notes ; Fifth Avenue, Uptown : a letter from Harlem ; Carmen Jones : the dark is light enough ; Notes for a hypothetical novel / James Baldwin.
