Prefaces
was the last of four books by Søren Kierkegaard to appear within two weeks in June 1844.
Three Upbuilding Discourses
and
Philosophical Fragments
were published first, followed by
The Concept of Anxiety
and its companion—published on the same day—the comically ironic
. Presented as a set of prefaces without a book to follow, this work is a satire on literary life in nineteenth-century Copenhagen, a lampoon of Danish Hegelianism, and a prefiguring of Kierkegaard's final collision with Danish Christendom.
Shortly after publishing
, Kierkegaard began to prepare
Writing Sampler
as a sequel.
considers the same themes taken up in
but in yet a more ironical and satirical vein. Although
remained unpublished during his lifetime, it is presented here as Kierkegaard originally envisioned it, in the company of
.