This is a major collection of more than seventy essays, critical pieces, biographical sketches, and memoirs by the renowned poet, translator, and essayist. It includes long-inaccessible contributions to journals and magazines together with previously unpublished material. Included are essays on Carlyle, Parchen, and Novalis, memoirs on Dali and Durrell, reviews of Miller, Ferlinghetti, and Watkins, and a number of pieces on Surrealism.These works reflect Gascoyne's 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. The subjects 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 Jean Jouve, Man Ray, Henry Miller, Novalis, Kenneth Patchen, Roland Penrose, Francis Picabia, Jeremy Reed, Elizabeth Smart, Tambimuttu, Graham Sutherland, Julian Trevelyan, Vernon Watkins, and, Antonia White.