Read-alikes and related books

Books like Selected Essays

If you loved Selected Essays by Samuel Johnson, this shelf of 24 books shares the same pull — rooted in Essays, Literary Criticism, and Literary Collections.

Top related books to Selected Essays

Handpicked for thematic and literary overlap — the best shelf companions to Selected Essays.

Voltaire A Very Short Introduction

Nicholas Cronk

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

The Household Tips of the Great Writers

Mark Crick

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

Walden

Henry David Thoreau

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

The Decay of Lying And Other Essays

Oscar Wilde

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

Silly Novels by Lady Novelists

George Eliot

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

Twenty-first-century Popular Fiction

Bernice M. Murphy

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

Bowie’s Books The Hundred Literary Heroes Who Changed His Life — John O’Connell

John O'Connell

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

When We Were the Kennedys A Memoir from Mexico, Maine

Monica Wood

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

Arts of the Possible Essays and Conversations

Adrienne Rich

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

#10

Unpacking My Library

Walter Benjamin

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

#11

Ex Libris 100 Books for Everyone’s Bookshelf

Michiko Kakutani

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

#12

Democratic Vistas and Other Papers

Walt Whitman

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

#13

But Have You Read the Book? 52 Literary Gems That Inspired Our Favorite Films

Kristen Lopez

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

#14

Browse The World in Bookshops

Henry Hitchings

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

#15

Karmic Traces, 1993-1999

Eliot Weinberger

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

#16

The Hallamshire Glossary (1829)

Themes: Essays

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

#18

Vindication A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft

Lyndall Gordon

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

#19

The Bad Boy of Athens Classics from the Greeks to Game of Thrones

Daniel Mendelsohn

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

#20

A Russian Journal

John Steinbeck

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

#21

On Lighthouses

Jazmina Barrera

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

#22

Antigone

Sophocles

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

#23

You, Too, Could Write a Poem

David Orr

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

#24

American Rhapsody Writers, Musicians, Movie Stars, and One Great Building

Claudia Roth Pierpont

Themes: Essays • Literary Criticism • Literary Collections

The 24 books on this list are tied together by themes of Essays, Literary Criticism, Literary Collections — the same threads that run through Selected Essays by Samuel Johnson. Among the authors featured: Nicholas Cronk, Mark Crick, Henry David Thoreau, Oscar Wilde, and others.