The Gift

The Gift brilliantly argues for the importance of creativity in our increasingly money-driven society. Reaching deep into literature, anthropology and psychology for striking examples, the heart of Lewis Hyde's modern masterpiece is the simple and important idea that a 'gift' can inspire and change our lives, art and culture. Lewis Hyde has been championed by some of the greatest artists of our time. He addresses the questions we face every day in our public and private lives.

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 kind of disruptive imagination that 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's most recent book is Common as Air, a stirring defence of our cultural commons, that vast store of art and ideas we have inherited from the past and continue to enrich in the present. A MacArthur Fellow and former Director of Creative Writing at Harvard, Hyde is currently the Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College in Ohio.