18.4: For More on the Essay

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If you want a really good and thorough introduction to the essay, I recommend Philip Lopate’s The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. This book features a large collection of essays, starting with very early versions from the ancient world, continuing through Montaigne, and reaching all the way to the present day. Lopate also has a great list of books of essays and books on the essay, so you can probably find whatever you want by starting with Lopate. You can also check out John D’Agata’s The Lost Origins of the Essay, which goes back in time even further than Lopate’s collection. If you want to read Montaigne, you can read the M.A. Screech translation, which I’ve used here, or you can read the Donald Frame translation, which sometimes reads a little easier. You can also find a lot of essays online, especially of older essayists. If you google “Montaigne” and “Project Gutenberg” for example, you’ll find a lot, though the translation is from seventeenth century. You can also find twentieth-century essayists online, including Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, and James Baldwin, among others. Many living essayists, however, still have their work copyrighted. Nevertheless, you may be able to find a lot of contemporary work on your library shelves and in your library electronic databases.