Books like Bacon's Essays by Francis Bacon

A series of spiritual exercises for leading a meaningful life, 2,000 years old and still relevant today.

John Stuart Mill’s classic 1859 essay, *On Liberty*, argues for individual freedom, democratic representation, and women’s rights within a utilitarian framework, shaping modern debates on liberty, civil rights, and political philosophy.

This is the first extensive one-volume anthology of Bacon's writings since 1905. It includes the major English literary works on which his reputation rests: the Advancement of Learning (1605), the Essays (1597 and 1625), and the posthumously published New Atlantis (1626). In addition it reprints sixteen other works which are not otherwise available, which show Bacon's remarkable all-round abilities in politics, law, theology, and poetry. A special feature of the edition is its extensive annotation, which identifies Bacon's sources and allusions (in the Bible, in classical literature, and in Renaissance texts). It also provides full explanation of Bacon's vocabulary, which is as rich as Shakespeare's, but far less familiar. Detailed headnotes recreate the political and intellectual contexts in which these works were produced.

Francis Bacon's tormented self-images, his brutal portrayals of friends and fellow artists, and his deformations and stylistic distortions of classicism have broken the mould of portraiture; no other painter of the twentieth century has so drastically overturned the genre. Bacon: Portraits and Self-Portraits, published in association with the Estate of Francis Bacon, is the first book to be dedicated to this aspect of his work. With superb reproductions of more than 130 studies and portraits, including those of Lucian Freud, George Dyer, John Edwards, Isabel Rawsthorne, Mick Jagger, Muriel Belcher and Henrietta Moraes, Bacon: Portraits and Self-Portraits offers new insight into these radical and disturbing images. Many details are included, revealing for the first time the varied textures of Bacon's paint surface. Milan Kundera, the famed Czech novelist, provides a perceptive introduction, explaining his response to Bacon's works, while France Borel sets them in the context of his life and influences, and explains his pioneering approach to portraiture.