Austin Clarke is widely regarded as one of 20th-century Ireland's most important poets. In this selection of nearly fifty essays and reviews written over Clarke's long career, he demonstrates that he is an astute and provocative literary critic as well. Having grown up in Dublin when the excitement of the Irish Literary Revival was still running high, Clarke knew many of the principal figures of that movement personally, and his readings of Yeats, Joyce, Synge, O'Casey, Lady Gregory, George Moore, and others enjoy the advantages of an insider's point of view. A selection of Clarke's writings on Yeats is followed by his writings on other Irish writers and the Irish Literary Revival, and on Modern English and American literature. Included as an appendix is an exhaustive list of Clarke's literary criticism published in periodicals.

In his last years D. H. Lawrence often wrote for newspapers; he needed the money, and clearly enjoyed the work. He also wrote several substantial essays during the same period. This meticulously-edited collection brings together major essays such as Pornography and Obscenity and Lawrence's spirited Introduction to the volume of his Paintings; a group of autobiographical pieces, two of which are published here for the first time; and the articles Lawrence wrote at the invitation of newspaper and magazine editors. There are thirty-nine items in total, thirty-five of them deriving from original manuscripts; all were written between 1926 and Lawrence's death in March 1930. They are ordered chronologically according to the date of composition; each is preceded by an account of the circumstances in which it came to be published. The volume is introduced by a substantial survey of Lawrence's career as a writer responding directly to public interests and concerns.