The adventures and attitudes shared by the American writers dubbed "The Lost Generation" are brought to life here by one of the group's most notable members. Feeling alienated in the America of the 1920s, Fitzgerald, Crane, Hemingway, Wilder, Dos Passos, Crowley, and many other writers "escaped" to Europe, some forever, some as temporary exiles. As Cowley details in this intimate, anecdotal portrait, in renouncing traditional life and literature, they expanded the boundaries of art.

Critic, poet, editor, chronicler of the Lost Generation, elder statesman of the Republic of Letters, Malcolm Cowley (1898-1989) was an eloquent witness to American literary and political life. His letters, mostly unpublished, provide a self-portrait of Cowley and his time and make possible a full appreciation of his long, varied career.

"A carefully understated but chilling account of the whole 3 ½ centuries during which 15 million Africans were snatched from their homes and delivered into slavery in the New World." — TimeIn 1518, the Atlantic slave trade began with the landing in the West Indies of the first enslaved people directly from Africa. These were the victims of a forced migration that was more callous and immensely larger, in the end, than any other such movement of modern or an...

In Our Time, Ernest Hemingway's first collection of short stories, heralded the arrival of an original and distinct literary voice. The stories' richly complicated themes of alienation, loss, grief, and separation contrast with Hemingway's spare but deeply evocative prose.This Warbler Classics edition includes the essay Hemingway at Midnight by eminent literary critic Malcolm Cowley, who was a contemporary of Hemingway, as well as a detailed biographical timeline....

**A finalist for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • Named a Best Book of the Year by The New YorkerA delightful and majestic reckoning with the ascent of American fiction in the twentieth century through the prism of the under-known man who had an astonishing amount to do with it**Malcolm Cowley is not a household name today, but the American literary canon would look very different without him. A prototypical “man of letters” of his gene...

**A finalist for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • Named a Best Book of the Year by The New YorkerA delightful and majestic reckoning with the ascent of American fiction in the twentieth century through the prism of the under-known man who had an astonishing amount to do with it**Malcolm Cowley is not a household name today, but the American literary canon would look very different without him. A prototypical “man of letters” of his gene...

A collection of Valéry’s essays on three artists who were of central importance to himPaul Valéry had an enduring fascination with Leonardo, Poe, and Mallarmé and his essays on these fellow artists are among his most important writings. This volume presents those essays along with extensive selections on these figures from Valéry’s Notebooks. Valéry’s Leonardo and Poe were almost pure invention. It was not so much their works as their minds that interested...

This volume, edited by Carl Bode in collaboration with Malcolm Cowley, presents the essential Emerson, selected from works that eloquently express the philosophy of a worldly idealist. The Portable Emerson comprises essays, including “History,” “Self-Reliance,” “The Over-Soul,” “Circles,” and “The Poet”; Emerson’s first book, Nature, in its entirety; twenty-two poems, including “Uriel,” “The Humble-Bee,” and “Give All to Love”; orations, including “The Ame...

Abraham Lincoln read it with approval, but Emily Dickinson described its bold language and themes as "disgraceful." Ralph Waldo Emerson found it "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet produced." Published at the author's expense on July 4, 1855, Leaves of Grass inaugurated a new voice and style into American letters and gave expression to an optimistic, bombastic vision that took the nation as its subject. Unlike many other editions of Leaves of Grass, which r...

In the middle of the turbulent 1960s Malcolm Boyd's Are You Running With Me, Jesus? appeared on the scene and broke the mold from which devotional texts had previously been made. Boyd's prayers engaged traditional Christian themes with a decidedly contemporary voice—honest, direct, insightful—while at the same time taking on issues of everyday concern: personal freedom, racial justice, sexuality. Billed by its original publisher as a collection of “prayers for all of us today who are findi...

Published in 1919, Winesburg, Ohio is Sherwood Anderson’s masterpiece, a work in which he achieved the goal to which he believed all true writers should aspire: to see and feel “all of life within.” In a perfectly imagined world, an archetypal small American town, he reveals the hidden passions that turn ordinary lives into unforgettable ones. Unified by the recurring presence of young George Willard, and played out against the backdrop of Winesburg, Anderson’s loosely con...