The essays in this volume examine questions such as Dickens symbolism, his political attitudes, his psychological tensions and his artistry. They are also concerned with aspects of Dickens which have been neglected in recent years, such as his handling of plot, his heroes and heroines, his journalism, his religious view and his philistinism.

The essays in this volume examine questions such as Dickens' symbolism, his political attitudes, his psychological tensions and his artistry. They are also concerned with aspects of Dickens which have been neglected in recent years, such as his handling of plot, his heroes and heroines, his journalism, his religious view and his philistinism.

This book brings together the most diverse figures-the classic aphorists, like La Rochefoucauld; the philosophers, from the Greeks to Samuel Johnson to Virginia Woolf-as well as statesmen, scientists, boulevardiers, Olympians, and gadflies. John Gross draws on their wisdom and wit to produce an anthology that will be referred to time and time again.

The essay is one of the richest of literary forms. Its most obvious characteristics are freedom, informality, and the personal touch--though it can also find room for poetry, satire, fantasy, and sustained argument.
All these qualities, and many others, are on display in The Oxford Book of Essays. The most wide-ranging collection of its kind to appear for many years, it includes 140 essays by 120 writers: classics, curiosities, meditations, diversions, old favorites, recent examples that deserve to be better known. A particularly welcome feature is the amount of space allotted to American essayists, from Benjamin Franklin to John Updike and beyond.
This is an anthology that opens with wise words about the nature of truth, and closes with a consideration of the novels of Judith Krantz. Some of the other topics discussed in its pages are anger, pleasure, Gandhi, Beau Brummell, wasps, party-going, gangsters, plumbers, Beethoven, potato crisps, the importance of being the right size, and the demolition of Westminster Abbey. It contains some of the most eloquent writing in English, and some of the most entertaining.

Parodies come in all shapes and sizes. There are broad parodies and subtle parodies, ingenious imitations and knockabout spoofs, scornful lampoons and affectionate pastiches. All these varieties, and many others, are represented in this stunning new anthology, which provides an unparalleled introduction to the parodist's art. The classics of the genre are all here, from Lewis Carroll to Max Beerbohm; but so are scores of lesser known but scarcely less gifted figures, and brilliant contemporaries such as Craig Brown and Wendy Cope. At every stage there are surprises. Chaucer celebrates Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Proust visits Chelsea, Yeats re-writes 'Old King Cole', Harry Potter encounters Mick Jagger, a modernized Sermon on the Mount rubs shoulders with an obituary of Sherlock Holmes. The collection provides a hilarious running commentary on literary history, but it also looks beyond literature in the narrow sense to take in such things as advertisements, legal rituals, political warfare, and a scientific hoax.

"Delightful. Mr. Gross's legendary gifts as an editor and critic are much in evidence...the entire anthology benefits from his discreet running commentary. Parody is a form of impersonation, obviously, but also collaboration. What makes it so pleasurable, as Mr. Gross's anthology shows on every page, is not just the accuracy of the performance, though that's certainly essential. In the funniest parodies, there is the faint but unmistakable sense of giddy collusion; and in such improbable duets the parodist can't always be distinguished from the parodied." -- The Wall Street Journal
"An enjoyable survey of the age of literary parody, well informed but unpedantic." --The New Yorker

"Writing a parody is hard. In the 1940s, a competition in the New Statesman invited readers to parody Graham Greene. Greene himself entered under a pseudonym and only came second. Get it right, though, and you have a withering form of criticism and an immortal entertainment rolled into one. John Gross's new anthology of parodies in English (with a few foreign titbits) has samples both high and low of this diverse genre." -- The Economist
"The critic FR Leavis disliked parody on the grounds that it the writer being held up to ridicule. A moment or two in the company of John Gross's sparkling new compendium demonstrates how wrong Leavis was. Gross's book passes the first great anthologist's test -putting in everything the reader expects to find, and a whole lot more besides-with flying colours." --DJ Taylor, The Financial Times
"Remarkable...John Gross has proved a fine editor of selections from a mode that is more varied and trickier than it may seem, as indeed he indicates in his scholarly introduction. The collection provides the delights of both amusement and schadenfreude and for the most erudite readers, the incomparable joy of knowing that they have recognized and appreciated much that the rest of us have not." --The New Criterion
"Funny and intelligent. John Gross is an excellent and unintrusive host, offering his words of explanation or discussion here and there with wit and understated erudition, and he has produced here a fine, diverting book." --The Times Literary Supplement
"John Gross has compiled a historical anthology that is something to treasure." -- John Sutherland, Literary Review
"Superb. This is an anthology with something for everyone." -- Simon Griffith, Mail on Sunday
"This collection of parodies does not disappoint. A deliciously funny book." -- Bevis Hillier, The Spectator
"It is a mark of the range and depth of this collection of spoofs, skits and lampoons that the editor John Gross gives, that...it is impossible to read it without smiling, smirking or laughing out loud." -- Mark Sanderson, London Evening Standard
"Excellent introduction to this superb smorgasbord of mimicry and literary mutilation." -- Jonathan Wright, Catholic Herald
"The best pastiches, burlesques and spoofs have a magical wit that transcends mere mimicry, as this wide-ranging anthology shows. Gross has very sensibly put together an anthology that aims to gives pleasure on at least two levels. At best, his entries have enough comic vigour or elegance to be amusing even when one does not know the author being spoofed, and hilarious when one does." -- Kevin Jackson, The Sunday Times
"The art of parody has long occupied a pleasingly subversive place in our literature, so John Gross had a rich field to harvest here. His new and welcome anthology is well stocked with witty and diverting specimens. The book contains many gems." -- J. M. W. Thompson, Standpoint
"Substantial and richly entertaining anthology." -- The Sunday Telegraph
"Funny and intelligent. John Gross is an excellent and unintrusive host, offering his words of explanation or discussion here and there with wit and understated erudition, and he has produced here a fine, diverting book." -- The Times Literary Supplement
"Endlessly enjoyable." -- The Guardian
"A brilliant compendium." -- The Buffalo News
"The Oxford Book of Parodies is a treat. Gross's selection is judicious, ingenious, and accessible." --The Weekly Standard
"Plenty here to savor." --Books & Culture, Favorite Books of 2010
Parodies come in all shapes and sizes. There are broad parodies and subtle parodies, ingenious imitations and knockabout spoofs, scornful lampoons and affectionate pastiches. All these varieties, and many others, appear in this delightful new anthology compiled by master anthologist John Gross.
The classics of the genre are all here, but so are scores of lesser known but scarcely less brilliant works. At every stage there are surprises. Proust visits Chelsea, Yeats re-writes "Old King Cole," Harry Potter encounters Mick Jagger, a modernized Sermon on the Mount rubs shoulders with an obituary of Sherlock Holmes. The collection provides a hilarious running commentary on literary history, but it also looks beyond literature to include such things as ad parodies, political parodies, and even a scientific hoax.
The collection includes work by such accomplished parodists as Max Beerbohm, Robert Benchley, Bret Harte, H. L. Mencken, George Orwell, James Thurber, Peter Ustinov, and Evelyn Waugh. And the "victims" include Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Poe, Longfellow, Emily Dickinson, Conan Doyle, A. A. Milne, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Cole Porter, Ernest Hemingway, Allen Ginsberg, Martin Amis, and many others. The first and longer of the book's two parts is devoted to English-language authors, arranged in chronological order, along with parodies that they have inspired. The second part includes sections on more general literary topics, on aspects of individual authors which transcend the format of the first part, and on a handful of foreign writers.
Parody can be the most entertaining form of criticism, and one of the most delicate, erudite, and allusive. The Oxford Book of Parod

In The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, master anthologist John Gross brings together a delectable smorgasbord of literary tales, offering striking new insight into some of the most important writers in history. Many of the anecdotes here are funny, others are touching, outrageous, sinister, inspiring, or downright weird. They show writers from Chaucer to Bob Dylan acting both unpredictably and deeply in character. The range is wide--this is a book which finds room for Milton and Shakespeare, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, Kurt Vonnegut and P. G. Wodehouse, Chinua Achebe and Salman Rushdie, James Baldwin and Tom Wolfe. It is also a book in which you can find out which great historian's face was once mistaken for a baby's bottom, which film star experienced a haunting encounter with Virginia Woolf not long before her death, and what Agatha Christie really thought of her popular character Hercule Poirot. It is in short an unrivalled collection of literary gossip offering intimate glimpses into the lives of authors ranging from Shakespeare to Philip Roth--a book not just for lovers of literature, but for anyone with a taste for the curiosities of human nature.