In the fall, I taught English 366: The Essay at Lake Forest College, a writing workshop devoted to the study of the essay as a unique genre. We were not midway through the first class meeting when a ...

A little while back, we wrote an essay arguing against killing off the undergraduate essay. The piece generated a lot of reaction, much of it focused on the question of what an essay should be. Some ...

The word essay derives from the title of a 1580 collection of writings by the Frenchman Michel de Montaigne. In his Essays, Montaigne set down his thoughts on whatever subject snared his ...

EVOLUTION OF THE ESSAY FORM; The Old School, the Modern and the Art Nouveau -- Three Striking Examples of Stages in Literary Development Found in Sir James Stephen, Balfour Browne, and Maeterlinck.