The Uncollected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick

Elizabeth Hardwick's popularity never matched the enormous regard critics had for her during her life. However, thanks to a string of publications following her death in 2007, the word is out. The Uncollected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick, edited by Alex Andriesse, makes a fine companion to her Collected Essays, selected by Darryl Pinckney and published in 2017.

Featuring 35 essays, this anthology covers everything from headline news, such as the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal ("Head over Heels") and the O.J. Simpson trial ("Family Values"), to the very particular, such as the blessings of a summer in Maine or reveries on growing up in Lexington, Ky. In their range of subject matter and length, these essays demonstrate Hardwick's ability to illuminate with both high-beam headlights and pocket flashlights, to digress articulately at length and compress immense thoughts into curt phrases. Every piece contains sharp observation and analysis. But Hardwick's writing is also full of keen feeling, lively curiosity and deep concern for the world's many people, places and things. Hardwick may have led the enviable life of a New York City intellectual, but she always carried with her the critical eye of an outsider. Her essays bring to life the perspective of one equally at home in the salon parlor and on the sidewalks of Main Street.

This collection may be read from front to back or in any order. No matter how readers choose to dive in, these essays deliver the enlightenment and pleasure that only a brilliant mind unfurling itself on the page can offer. --Walker Minot, freelance writer and editor

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