Short answers, pulled from the story.
Works of Love, published in 1847, is a book about the Christian conception of agapic love, known in Greek as agape. Kierkegaard contrasts agape with erotic love (eros) and preferential love given to friends and family (philia), arguing that agapic love is an obligation rather than a feeling. The book uses New Testament passages as anchors for reflections on what it means to live out this form of love in real relationships.
Kierkegaard published Works of Love under his own name to distinguish it from his more famous pseudonymous works, which he released under invented author personas. Signing his own name signaled that the book represented his direct personal and theological commitments as a Christian ethicist.
In Works of Love, eros refers to erotic love and philia to preferential love felt for friends and family; both are selective attachments directed at particular people for particular reasons. Agape, by contrast, is the form of love Kierkegaard treats as obligatory, captured in the phrase 'you shall love your neighbor,' extending even to those one has no natural reason to care about.
Works of Love is divided into two parts, each organized as a series of Christian reflections anchored to specific mentions of love from the New Testament. Part One covers topics including love's hidden life, duty, conscience, and the obligation to love one's neighbor. Part Two addresses love's endurance, generosity, and mercy, closing with a chapter on the work of love in praising love itself.
Kierkegaard was one of the founders of existentialism, and Works of Love uses that framework to examine the transfer of individuals from secular modes of existence, the aesthetic and ethical stages, to genuine religious existence. The actual relationships and experiences of Christ's disciples appear throughout as tangible models for how agapic love can be lived out.
Kierkegaard described Works of Love as Christian reflections rather than discourses, and wrote in a rhetorical style that repeats key ideas and accumulates numerous examples rather than building a single linear argument. He deliberately circled central claims from multiple angles to let their weight settle on the reader.