David Gascoyne s international reputation rests on his outstanding achievement as poet and translator. The publication of his Selected Prose in his 82nd year was an event of major literary significance. Reading this remarkable collection, the harvest of some sixty years, which includes long-inaccessible contributions to journals and magazines together with previously unpublished material, we can appreciate for the first time the breadth and consistent quality of Gascoyne s elegant and eloquent prose writings. They reflect his continuing engagement with the changing context of his times, and his close involvement with and response to luminary figures in twentieth-century art and literature. ESSAYS include Eileen Agar, Louis Aragon, W. H. Auden, George Barker, Andre Breton, Thomas Carlyle, Leonora Carrington, Rene Char, Salvador Dali, Lawrence Durrell, T. S. Eliot, Paul Eluard, Max Ernst, Vincent van Gogh, Geoffrey Grigson, S. W. Hayter, Friedrich Holderlin, Humphrey Jennings, Pierre Jea