Modern Essays

Selected by Christopher Morley

Thirty-three epitomal English and American personal essays chosen by a novelist who conceived the reader of his anthology as “a friend spending the evening in happy gossip along the shelves.”

Bibliographic Record Preface

Contents

NEW YORK: HARCOURT, BRACE, 1921 NEW YORK: BARTLEBY.COM, 2000

1. American Literature by John Macy
2. Mary White by William Allen White
3. Niagara Falls by Rupert Brooke
4. The Almost Perfect State by Don Marquis
5. “The Man-o’-War’s ’Er ’Usband” by David W. Bone
6. The Market by William McFee
7. Holy Ireland by Joyce Kilmer
8. A Familiar Preface by Joseph Conrad
9. On Drawing by A. P. Herbert
10. O. Henry by O. W. Firkins
11. The Mowing of a Field by Hilaire Belloc
12. The Student Life by William Osler
13. The Decline of the Drama by Stephen Leacock
14. America and the English Tradition by Harry Morgan Ayres
15. The Russian Quarter by Thomas Burke
16. A Word for Autumn by A. A. Milne
17. “A Clergyman” by Max Beerbohm
18. Samuel Butler: Diogenes of the Victorians by Stuart P. Sherman
19. Bed-Books and Night-Lights by H. M. Tomlinson
20. The Precept of Peace by Louise Imogen Guiney
21. On Lying Awake at Night by Stewart Edward White
22. A Woodland Valentine by Marian Storm
23. The Elements of Poetry by George Santayana
24. Nocturne by Simeon Strunsky
25. Beer and Cider by George Saintsbury
26. A Free Man’s Worship by Bertrand Russell
27. Some Historians by Philip Guedalla
28. Winter Mist by Robert Palfrey Utter
29. Trivia by Logan Pearsall Smith
30. Beyond Life by James Branch Cabell
31. The Fish Reporter by Robert Cortes Holliday
32. Some Nonsense About a Dog by Harry Esty Dounce
33. The Fifty-First Dragon by Heywood Broun