Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0385422989, Hardcover)

For more than four hundred years, the personal  essay has been one of the richest and most vibrant  of all literary forms. Distinguished from the  detached formal essay by its friendly, conversational  tone, its loose structure, and its drive toward  candor and self-disclosure, the personal essay  seizes on the minutiae of daily life-vanities,  fashions, foibles, oddballs, seasonal rituals, love and  disappointment, the pleasures of solitude,  reading, taking a walk -- to offer insight into the  human condition and the great social and political  issues of the day. The Art of the Personal  Essay is the first anthology to  celebrate this fertile genre. By presenting more than  seventy-five personal essays, including influential  forerunners from ancient Greece, Rome, and the  Far East, masterpieces from the dawn of the  personal essay in the sixteenth century, and a wealth of  the finest personal essays from the last four  centuries, editor Phillip Lopate, himself an  acclaimed essayist, displays the tradition of the  personal essay in all its historical grandeur, depth,  and diversity.