Essayist
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An essayist is an author who writes compositions which can be about any particular subject. The essay is (usually) shorter and (mostly) more tentative than a formal finished monograph or treatise.
The essay was a favourite form of the man of letters, allowing a display of understated reading and culture. In recent years it has also been used with greater acuity, and more definite political intent.
A representative list of famous essayists:
- Matthew Arnold
- Francis Bacon
- Hilaire Belloc
- William Cobbett
- Thomas de Quincey
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- William Hazlitt
- Hugh Hood
- Leigh Hunt
- Samuel Johnson
- Charles Lamb
- Michel de Montaigne
- Joyce Carol Oates
- Katherine Ann Porter
- Bertrand Russell
- John Ralston Saul
- Susan Sontag
- Lytton Strachey
- Voltaire
- Rebecca West
- E. B. White
- Virginia Woolf