Reading and studying great works of literature can help us expand our vision, worldview, and frame of reference and can make us feel more vital, exuberant, and alive. These activities can provide an intellectual experience to make life more comprehensible and meaningful. Furthermore, reading and studying literature can do an extraordinary job of telling us more about who we are and who we can become. Finally, reading and studying great literature provide us with a lens to help us see far beyond what we can see ourselves, as well as a lens to help us see far beyond what we can see about ourselves. Twenty Literary Essays provides students with a curated selection of literary works to build their appreciation of renowned creatives and thought leaders, expand their consciousness, and help them better understand the complexity of the human experience. Covering a wide range of literature, students read critical essays on Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Carl Sandburg, Robert Lowell, William Carlos Williams, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Walter Pater, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Anne Bradstreet, Alice Walker, Elie Wiesel, William Shakespeare, Anne Bronte, George Eliot, Maxim Gorky, Leo Tolstoy, Robert Louis Adams, and many others. A dedicated section on rhetoric provides readers with a historical introduction to the topic, as well as an essay to help them understand the tension, influence, and cross-pollination within philosophy, poetry, and rhetoric in ancient Greece. Designed to provide students with an enlightening and intellectual experience, Twenty Literary Essays is ideal for courses and programs in literature.