Anyone who knows Frank Kermode's work will know that Bury Place Papers, a collection of essays originally published in the London Review of Books, is delightful and rewarding reading for anyone with literary interests.

Although they're called essays, in fact they're book reviews, or, at least, review one or more books in the course of the intellectual excursion that most of them represent. Three on William Empson are particularly notable, in part perhaps because Kermode knew him personally, but the review of Richard Ellmann's Oscar Wilde biography becomes, in Kermode's hands, a sensitive exploration of the failure of those who called themselves his friends in better times, and a stimulating re-evaluation of Wilde's work.

Others may disagree, but the introduction struck me as disorganized and largely irrelevant, too filled with opinions on the works and people Kermode in this volume handles so much better. As usual I left it till after the essays themselves, and perhaps it suffered by comparison, but parts would have been incomprehensible if read in advance.

For a certain kind of reader, highly recommended -- and for me the portal to longer Kermode work.