This collection provides us with his essays and reviews that were collected in "The Shores of Light" and the book that put him in the big leagues of artistic criticism, "Axel's Castle". This volume also supplies some reviews that were not collected in book form. You not only get a look at the writers and artists of his time, but also discover how Wilson sees them in the context of the artists of earlier times.

For example, Axel's Castle examines literature from 1870-1930 through the works of six writers: W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Marcel Proust, and Paul Valéry. He sees them as the culmination of a movement that began much earlier and discusses its origins and how these writers represent a fulfillment of the issues raise by Romanticism and so forth.

This book is helpful in providing a context for understanding these writers within their culture, their artistic goals, and how things were viewed at the time—rather than passing judgment on those decades in retrospect.

This book also has a chronology of Wilson's life, notes on the text, other notes that explain certain issues within the text that a modern reader might need help with, as well as an index.