Eighty short stories by a master of the genre
O. Henry's comic eye and unique, ironic approach to life's realities are unmatched. These stories about con men and tricksters and "innocent" deceivers, about fate, luck, and coincidence have delighted generations of readers. Set in New York and the West, in Central America and the South, they demonstrate O. Henry's mastery of speech and place, and highlight his appreciation of life's quirks.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than...

Anne Carson's poetry characterized by various reviewers as "short talks," "essays," or "verse narratives" combines the confessional and the critical in a voice all her own.

This collection of four essays on the art of the still life begins with a look back to pictures of meals painted on the walls of Egyptian tombs - as the author points out, the soul could eat. Davenport's meditations on the still life dip into the full history of this art form, touching on neolithic cave paintings, the Dutch masters, Cezanne, Van Gogh, even photography and the collage.

Since the publication of Tatlin in 1974, Guy Davenport has established himself as one of the most original and stimulating writers of fiction today. Twelve Stories draws the best work from Davenports early collections: Tatlin , Apples and Pears, and The Drummer of the Eleventh North Devonshire Fusiliers . Chosen by the author, these stories are nowhere else in print.Guy Davenports short stories are journeys through history and the imagination. Radically original and surprising, comic and sensuous, Davenports virtuoso talent charms us into a world both familiar and strange. Whether in the...

These essays cover a range of topics, including art and architecture, religion, and literature in a collage of ideas, commentary, and criticism from snake handling to Wallace Stevens.

Jesus was a street preacher who taught through story and aphorism. Antedating the Gospels, these 105 sayings were recorded by his followers during and shortly after his lifetime. Through the immediacy of direct quotation, Davenport and Urrutia's bold translation shakes our preconceptions, reintroducing us to the living teacher whose powerful words ring anew.

All the extant fragments of Herakleitos and a collection of Diogenes' words from various sources. Herakleitos' words, 2500 years old, usually appear in English translated by philosophers as makeshift clusters of nouns and verbs which can then be inspected at length. Here they are translated into plain English and allowed to stand naked and unchaperoned in their native archaic Mediterranean light. The practical words of the Athenian street philosopher Diogenes have never before been extracted from the apocryphal anecdotes in which they have come down to us. They are addressed to humanity at...