Montaigne called it a ramble; Chesterton the joke of literature; and Hume an ambassador between the worlds of learning and of conversation. But what is an essay, and how did it emerge as a literary form? What are the continuities and contradictions across its history, from Montaigne's 1580 Essais through the familiar intimacies of the Romantic essay, and up to more recent essayists such as Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, and Claudia Rankine? Sometimes called the fourth genre, the essay has been over-shadowed in literary history by fiction, poetry, and drama, and has proved notoriously resistant to definition. On Essays reveals in the essay a pattern of paradox: at once a pedagogical tool and a refusal of the methodical languages of universities and professions; politically engaged but retired and independent; erudite and anti-pedantic; occasional and enduring; intimate and oratorical; allusive and idiosyncratic. Perhaps because it is a form of writing against which literary scholarship has defined itself, there has been surprisingly little work on the tradition of the essay. Neither a comprehensive history nor a student companion, On Essays is a series of seventeen elegantly written essays on authors and aspects in the history of the genre - essays which, taken together, form the most substantial book yet published on the essay in Britain and America.

Special reports and monographs are issued as part of some of the Reports.

This is the biography of the Gothic novelist, Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), author of "The Mysteries of Udolpho", the world's first "best seller". The text clarifies Radcliffe's emergence from a Dissenting Unitarian, rather than a conventional Anglican, background. This places Radcliffe within the circle of other women writers nurtured in radical Dissenting backgrounds (such as Wollstonecraft, Hays, Inchbauld and Barbauld). Radcliffe's childhood and family background are documented and the rumours of her madness and reclusiveness investigated leading to an evaluation of the resons for her probable mental breakdown. The text constitutes a "cultural history" of a writing woman, demonstrating her place within radical culture, literary tradition and aesthetic discourse, and examining her role in the rise of the professional woman writer. Her novels are analyzed mainly in the context of her biography and sources.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1871. The publishing house Anatiposi publishes historical books as reprints. Due to their age, these books may have missing pages or inferior quality. Our aim is to preserve these books and make them available to the public so that they do not get lost.