Includes essays by: Michel de Montaigne William Cornwallis Thomas Culpepper Charles Colton Joseph Addison David Hume Samuel Johnson Leigh Hunt William Hazlitt Charles Lamb Ralph Waldo Emerson Alexander Smith Virginia Woolf Georg Lukàcs Christopher Morley G. K. Chesterton Theodor Adorno Robert Atwan Réda Bensmaïa Carl Klaus R. Lane Kauffmann Phillip Lopate Hélène Cixous Rachel Blau DuPlessis Nancy Mairs Cynthia Ozick John D'Agata Brian Lennon Lia Purpura David Shields

This collection of essays features essayists writing about the essay as a literary form from its creation in the fifteenth century by Michel de Montaigne to its contemporary manifestations. The essays consider define categorize and reveal aspects of the essay differently from any other anthology and the anthology contains work that is not anthologized elsewhere. Included are essays by Hume Lamb Emerson Woolf Chesterton Adorno David Shields and many others.

David Lazar is the author of The Body of Brooklyn Powder Town and Occasional Desire: Personal Essays. He is the editor of Truth in Nonfiction Michael Powell: Interviews and Conversations with M. F .K. Fisher and the literary journal Hotel Amerika. He is the director of Nonfiction Writing at Columbia College Chicago.