Nicholas Hagger's 55 books include innovatory works on literature, history, philosophy and international politics. In his first published literary work he revived the Preface, which had fallen into disuse after Wordsworth and Shelley. He went on to write Prefaces (sometimes called ‘Prologues’, ‘Introductions’ or ‘Introductory Notes’) for all his subsequent books. Collected Prefaces, a collection of 55 Prefaces (excluding the Preface to this book), sets out his thinking and the reader can follow the development of his philosophy of Universalism (of which he is the main exponent), his literary approach (particularly his combination of Romanticism and Classicism which he calls "neo-Baroque") and his metaphysical thinking. His Prefaces can be read as essays, and as in T.S. Eliot’s Selected Essays there is an interaction between adjacent Prefaces that brings an entirely new perspective to Hagger's works. These Prefaces cover an enormous range. Nicholas Hagger is a Renaissance man at home in many disciplines. His Universalism focuses on humankind’s relationship to the whole universe as reflected in seven key disciplines seen as wholes: the whole of literature, history, philosophy and the sciences, mysticism, religion, international politics and statecraft and world culture. Behind all the Prefaces is Hagger’s fundamental perception of the unity of the universe as the One and of humankind’s position in it. These Prefaces complement his Selected Letters, a companion volume also published by O-Books, and contain startling insights that illumine and send readers to the works the Prefaces introduce.

Essays document the author's theories of poetry, discuss the goals of oral poetry, and analyze brief poems and poetic concepts.

Gunnar Harding, perhaps the most prominent living Swedish poet after Tomas Transtromer, has won all the major Swedish literary awards, yet has scarcely been translated for English language readers. Guarding the Air: Selected Poems of Gunnar Harding presents 112 poems drawn from eleven of the thirteen books Harding has published that contain poetry in verse. The book contains a brief introduction by the translator; a useful guide to Harding's poetry in the form of his prefaces to his three Swedish volumes of selected poems; an extensive set of endnotes, many of which include or rely on comments by the poet; and an index to poem titles.