The first historically and internationally comprehensive collection of its kind, Essayists on the Essay is a path-breaking work that is nothing less than a richly varied sourcebook for anyone interested in the theory, practice, and art of the essay. This unique work includes a selection of fifty distinctive pieces by American, Canadian, English, European, and South American essayists from Montaigne to the present—many of which have not previously been anthologized or translated—as well as a detailed bibliographical and thematic guide to hundreds of additional works about the essay. From a buoyant introduction that provides a sweeping historical and analytic overview of essayists’ thinking about their genre—a collective poetics of the essay—to the detailed headnotes offering pointed information about both the essayists themselves and the anthologized selections, to the richly detailed bibliographic sections, Essayists on the Essay is essential to anyone who cares about the form. This collection provides teachers, scholars, essayists, and readers with the materials they need to take a fresh look at this important but often overlooked form that has for too long been relegated to the role of service genre—used primarily to write about other more “literary” genres or to teach young people how to write. Here, in a single celebratory volume, are four centuries of commentary and theory reminding us of the essay’s storied history, its international appeal, and its relationship not just with poetry and fiction but also with radio, film, video, and new media.

THE ESSAYIST Summary: The anonymous authors novel, Doing The Thinking, had been wildly and nationally selling for nearly three years after an immediate inception. Many private interest groups and everyone except one prospect (too wrapped up in her own story world after having emerged from a thieving coma and time consuming therapy), have made it their mission to discover and meet the author behind the incognito garments and characteristically designated apparatus. Some prospective candidates even entertain their own wishful thinking by launching nearly persuasive arguments for their own candidacy. But whos really our altruistic author whose royalties all go to charity, whose positive modeling causes the ripple effect of generous contributions and worldwide enhancement of childcare provisions, and who improves countless lives via such an inspirational work, without even the publisher or any loved ones fully able to assert positive identification? The Essayist. The Essayist was born from a salvaged, gifted manuscript, and an impulsive act of love after a tragedy. Popularity lead to the miracle of remade long-distant relationships, heartwarming reunions, exemplary acts of loyalty, the desperately needed release of pent up domestic secrets in a mogul family, a small familys fulfillment, and the rescue of a destitute teen. This complete fictional manuscript is geared for young adult to adult. It consists of 120,516 words, 42 chapters, and 221 pages of gnarling plots tossed into unraveling excitement. The plot becomes resolved in the end, with several open possibilities for a sequel.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1858.