An aphorism is "a short pithy statement or maxim," but beneath this definition lies a wealth of wit and insight to which neither the word nor a brief description can do justice.
This anthology demonstrates just how rewarding an art form the aphorism can be, and just how brilliantly the aphorist can illuminate the hidden truth, or lay bare the ironies of existence. Specific sections on desires and longings, self-doubt, fame and reputations, happiness and sorrow, cover the whole range of aphoristic literature. This book brings together the most diverse figures--the classic aphorists, like...

Never has one character of the stage provoked such controversy or achieved such infamy as Shakespeare's enigmatic Shylock. For four centuries the money lender of "The Merchant of Venice" has been reinvented as both villain and victim, as an object of tragedy and comedy, and has been used as an economic symbol and often as a lightning rod for anti-Semitism. But what was Shakespeare's attitude toward the character described on the play's title page in 1600 as "a man of extreme crueltie," and what should be our own? With brilliant historical perspective and insight, theater critic John Gross...

In this new edition of his landmark book, John Gross traces the shifting fortunes of the men who shaped literary opinion in England during the Victorian, Edwardian, and contemporary eras. He brings together famous or forgotten critics and editors prophets, aesthetes, statesmen, dons, radicals, social climbers, idealists, gossipmongers, and literary lions and explores not only their critical ideas but also their personalities, careers, social backgrounds, and politics. He looks at "the higher journalism;" the expansion of the reading public, the byways of British liberalism, and the rise of...