First published in America in 1979, The Gift is a modern classic. This inspiring examination of the 'gift economy' is even more relevant now than when it originally appeared. It's a brilliantly argued defence of the place of creativity in our increasingly market-orientated society.
'The Gift actually deserves the hyperbolic praise that in most blurbs is so empty. It is the sort of book that you remember where you were and even what you were wearing when you first picked it up. The sort that you hector friends about until they read it too. This is not just formulaic blurbspeak; it is the truth. No one who is invested in any kind of art, in questions of what real art does and doesn't have to do with money, spirituality, ego, love, ugliness, sales, politics, morality, marketing, and whatever you call 'value', can read The Gift and remain unchanged.' David Foster Wallace
The Reviews
'Persuasive and fascinatingly illustrated, The Gift profits immensely from the modesty and unpretentiousness of Hyde's writing and the fascinated good nature with which he expounds his propositions.'Tim Martin, Independent on Sunday
'A masterpiece - The Gift is the best book I know of for the aspiring young, for talented but unacknowledged creators, or even for those who have achieved material success and are worried that this means they've sold out.'
Margaret Atwood
Hardback
368 pages
Price: £15
ISBN: 9781841958330 Other editions
Paperback
Lewis Hyde was born in Boston and studied at the Universities of Minnesota and Iowa. In addition to The Gift, he is the author of Trickster Makes This World, a portrait of the disruptive imagination all cultures need if they are to remain lively and open to change. Editor of On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg and The Essays of Henry D Thoreau, Hyde is now writing a defence of the 'cultural commons', that vast store of ideas and art we have inherited from the past. A MacArthur Fellow and former director of creative writing at Harvard, Hyde is currently the Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College in Ohio.
