Ebook: Unacknowledged legislation: writers in the public sphere

Unacknowledged Legislation is a celebration of Percy Shelley's assertion that 'poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world'. In over thirty magnificent essays on writers from Oscar Wilde to Salman Rushdie, and with his trademark wit, rigour and flair, master critic Christopher Hitchens dispels the myth of politics as a stone tied to the neck of literature. Instead, Hitchens argues that when all parties in the state were agreed on a matter, it was the individual pens that created the space for a true moral argument.;Cover; Title Page; Copyright Page; Dedication Page; Contents; Foreword; I. 'In Praise of ... '; The Wilde Side; Oscar Wilde's Socialism; Lord Trouble; George Orwell and Raymond Williams; Oh, Lionel!; Age of Ideology; The Real Thing; The Cosmopolitan Man; After-time; Ireland; Stuck in Neutral; A Regular Bull; Not Dead Yet; II. 'In Spite of Themselves ... '; Old Man Kipling; Critic of the Booboisie; Goodbye to Berlin; The Grimmest Tales; The Importance of Being Andy; How Unpleasant to Meet Mr Eliot; Powell's Way; Something about the Poems; The Egg-head's Egger-on; Bloom's Way; III. 'Themes ... '