Selected Writings: Volume 4, 1938–1940

First edition in English. Tall thick 8vo. Pp. vi, 477. B/w illus. Black cloth-covered boards, stamped in silver and blue foil to spine; black end papers.

A translation of selections from Walter Benjamin's Gesammelte Schriften (1972). It ranges from studies of Baudelaire, Brecht, and the historian Carl Jochmann to appraisals of photography, film, and poetry. Here, we see Benjamin setting forth a socio-historical account of how art adapts in an age of violence and repression. Working at the height of his powers, Benjamin refined his theory of the mass media that culminated in the final version of his momentous essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility". Also included in this volume is his influential piece "On the Concept of History," completed just before his untimely death.