Unacknowledged Legislation
{{Infobox book
| image = Unacknowledged Legislation.jpg
| caption = Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere
by Christopher Hitchens
| author = Christopher Hitchens
| name = Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere
| country = United States
United Kingdom
| language = English
| subject = Politics
| publisher = Verso Books
| release_date = 2000
| media_type = Print (hardcover and paperback)
| pages = 358
| isbn = 9781859847862
| dewey = 820.9/358
| congress = PR478.P64 H58 2000
}}
Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere is a collection of essays[https://books.google.com/books?id=Dt8lTI6Q4h0C Google Books information] by the author and journalist Christopher Hitchens, published in 2000. It was first published in hardback by the New Left Books imprint, Verso.[http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v3=1&ti=1,1&SEQ=20120423165105&Search%5FArg=Unacknowledged%20Legislation%3A%20Writers%20in%20the%20Public%20Sphere&Search%5FCode=GKEY%5E%2A&CNT=100&type=quick&PID=vjsTHFSbP2RRA_WCsX2Nh8D7g7Ni&SID=1 Library of Congress]
Synopsis
Described as a celebration of Percy Shelley's assertion that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,"[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unacknowledged-Legislation-Writers-Public-Sphere/dp/1859843832 Unacknowledged Legislation, Amazon] the book contains thirty-eight essays on writers such as Oscar Wilde, P. G. Wodehouse, George Orwell, Rudyard Kipling, Philip Larkin, H. L. Mencken, Anthony Powell, T. S. Eliot and Salman Rushdie, in which Hitchens attempts to "dispel the myth of politics as a stone tied to the neck of literature".
Reception
In 2016, James Ley of The Sydney Morning Herald listed Unacknowledged Legislation among the books from Hitchens that "[represent] the best of his work as a journalist, literary critic and cultural commentator."{{cite news |url=http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/and-yet--review-the-last-scraps-from-the-brilliant-christopher-hitchens-20160108-gm20dc.html |title=And Yet ... review: The last scraps from the brilliant Christopher Hitchens |last=Ley |first=James |newspaper=The Sydney Morning Herald |date=January 14, 2016 |access-date=March 6, 2017}}