Powys, John Cowper

Enjoyment of Literature [Classics from Homer to Proust]

New York: Simon and Schuster, 1938.

No Flaws or Blemishes but minimal shelf handling; The bindings are tight and square. Text is clean; Lacking a dust jacket. 9.25 inches tall; 522 pages with an index.

Powys’s best-selling primer is part love letter to the classics, part guided tour for curious readers. Opening with a long introductory essay on why literature enlarges life, he then “travels” from Homer through the Bible and Greek tragedians to Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Wordsworth, Dickens, Whitman, Dostoevsky, Melville, Poe, Hardy, Nietzsche and Proust. 

The style is expansive and rhapsodic—more inspirational than technical—meant to orient general readers and spark reading rather than to argue fine points of theory. First published in New York by Simon & Schuster in October 1938, the book became a popular doorway into world literature for mid-century audiences. [Kirkus]

Subjects: World literature—history & appreciation; Canon formation; Reading as self-culture; Classics from Homer to Proust; Authors—Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, Goethe, Dickens, Whitman; Aesthetic philosophy, Literary criticism; Reader’s guide; Essays.

Item #21161

Price: $20.00