Annie Dillard's reputation as one of America's outstanding essayists was established with Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 and was hailed as a masterpiece in the tradition of Thoreau's Walden. Dillard's writing is directly descended from the transcendentalists, but her essays address contemporary issues ranging from theology, philosophy', aesthetics, and history to community, memory, imagination, and spirituality. She has published six prose books since Pilgrim at Tinker Greek, among them Teaching a Stone to Talk, Living by Fiction, and The Writing Life. In Annie Dillard Linda L. Smith provides an essential framework for the study of Dillard's life and writings. Smith lucidly traces the major themes in Dillard's work, notably her attempt to reconcile life's beauty with its horror, her concern with every aspect of consciousness, and her meditation on how life should be lived in the face of suffering and death. Inherent in all Dillard's work, Smith argues, is a return to spiritual concerns and a preoccupation with the nature of human consciousness, both beautifully expressed in an inimitable style. In emphasizing Dillard's vision of the natural and spiritual worlds, Smith provides a new appreciation of Dillard's lasting achievements, as well as an inspiring introduction to one of America's most talented and invigorating stylists.