David Womersley

A superb new edition of the essays of one of the greatest and most enjoyable prose writers in English. David Hume reshaped, redirected, and re-energised the English essay. His sceptical, rational, self-questioning persona created what amounted to a new intellectual arena, in which it was possible to think afresh about the world and the self. When he famously wrote that...

A superb new edition of the essays of one of the greatest and most enjoyable prose writers in English. David Hume reshaped, redirected, and re-energised the English essay. His sceptical, rational, self-questioning persona created what amounted to a new intellectual arena, in which it was possible to think afresh about the world and the self. When he famously wrote that...

In the eighteenth century, Samuel Johnson famously argued that Shakespeare is enduringly popular because he 'is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life'. Johnson's view largely prevailed until the late twentieth century, when it was challenged by a...