best british essayists

Classic British and American Essays and Speeches

English Prose From Jack London to Dorothy Parker

U.S. National Archives and Records Administration / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

From the works and musings of Walt Witman to those of Virginia Woolf, some of the cultural heroes and prolific artists of prose are listed below--along with some of the world's greatest essays and speeches  ever composed by these British and American literary treasures.

George Ade (1866-1944)

George Ade was an America playwright, newspaper columnist and humorist whose greatest recognition was "Fables in Slang" (1899), a satire that explored the colloquial vernacular of America. Ade eventually succeeded in doing what he set out to do: Make America laugh.

• The Difference Between Learning and Learning How : "In due time the Faculty gave the Degree of M.A. to what was left of Otis and still his Ambition was not satisfied."
• Luxuries: "About sixty-five per cent of all the people in the world think they are getting along great when they are not starving to death."
• Vacations: "The planet you are now visiting may be the only one you ever see."

Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906)

American activist Susan B. Anthony crusaded for the women's suffrage movement, making way for the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution in 1920, giving women the right to vote. Anthony is principally known for the six-volume "History of Woman Suffrage." 

• On Women's Right to Vote : "The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons?"

Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

The writings of American humorist, actor and drama critic Robert Benchley are considered his best achievement. His socially awkward, slightly confused persona allowed him to write about the inanity of the world to great effect.

• Advice to Writers : "A terrible plague of insufferably artificial and affected authors"
• Business Letters : "As it stands now things are pretty black for the boy."
• Christmas Afternoon : "Done in the Manner, If Not in the Spirit of Dickens"
• Do Insects Think? : "It really was more like a child of our own than a wasp, except that it looked more like a wasp than a child of our own."
• The Most Popular Book of the Month: "In practice, the book is not flawless. There are five hundred thousand names, each with a corresponding telephone number."

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)

British novelist and short-story writer Joseph Conrad rendered about the "tragedy of loneliness" at sea and became known for his colorful, rich descriptions about the sea and other exotic places. He is regarded as one of the greatest English novelists of all time.

• Outside Literature : "A sea voyage would have done him good. But it was I who went to sea--this time bound to Calcutta."

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)

American Frederick Douglass' great oratory and literary skills helped him to become the first African American citizen to hold high office in the US government. He was one of the 19th century's most prominent human rights activist, and his autobiography, "Life and Times of Frederick Douglass" (1882), became an American literary classic.

• The Destiny of Colored Americans : "Slavery is the peculiar weakness of America, as well as its peculiar crime."
• A Glorious Resurrection: "My long-crushed spirit rose."

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963)

W.E.B. Du Bois was an American scholar and human rights activist, a respected author and historian of literature. His literature and studies analyzed the unreachable depths of American racism. Du Bois' seminal work is a collection of 14 essays titled "The Souls of Black Folk" (1903). 

• Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others : "Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission."
• Of the Passing of the First-Born : "He knew no color-line, poor dear--and the Veil, though it shadowed him, had not yet darkened half his sun."

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

Known foremost for his novel "The Great Gatsby," American novelist and short-story writer F. Scott Fitzgerald was also a renown playboy and had a tumultuous life compounded by alcoholism and depression. Only after his death did he become known as a preeminent American literary author. 

• What I Think and Feel at 25: "The main thing is to be your own kind of a darn fool."

Ben Hecht  (1894-1964)

American novelist, short-story writer and playwright Ben Hecht is remembered as one of Hollywood's greatest screenplay writers and may best be remembered for "Scarface," Wuthering Heights" and "Guys and Dolls."

• Fog Patterns : "Yes, we are all lost and wandering in the thick mists. We have no destinations."
• Letters: "You would see a procession of mysterious figures flitting through the streets, an unending swarm of dim ones, queer ones."

Ernest Hemingway  (1899-1961)

American novelist Ernest Hemingway won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his mastery of the art of narrative ... and for the influence he has exerted on contemporary style" as demonstrated in his brilliant novel "The Old Man and the Sea."

• American Bohemians in Paris: "The scum of Greenwich Village, New York, has been skimmed off and deposited in large ladles on that section of Paris adjacent to the Café Rotonde."
• Camping Out : "Any man of average office intelligence can make at least as good a pie as his wife."

Martin Luther King Jr.  (1929-1968)

Civil rights activist and minister Martin Luther King Jr., winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, may be best known for "I Have A Dream," in which he wrote about love, peace, nonviolent activism and equality between all races.

• I Have a Dream : "Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children."
• Reading Quiz on "I Have a Dream"
• Ten Things You Should Know About Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" Speech

Jack London  (1876-1916)

Nineteenth-century American author and journalist Jack London is best known for his adventures "White Fang" and "The Call of the Wild." London published more than 50 books over the last 16 years of his life, including "John Barleycorn," which was somewhat of a memoir about his lifelong battle with alcohol.

• The Somnambulists : "[T]his archdeceiver believes all that they tell him. He reads only the newspapers and magazines that tell him what he wants to be told."
• The Story of an Eyewitness: The San Francisco Earthquake : "Not in history has a modern imperial city been so completely destroyed."
• Reading Quiz on "The San Francisco Earthquake"
• What Life Means to Me : "I accepted that up above me was all that was fine and noble and gracious, all that gave decency and dignity to life."

H.L. Mencken  (1880-1956)

American journalist, activist and editor H.L. Mencken was also a very influential literary critic. His columns were popular not only for their literary criticism, but also for their questioning of popular political, social and cultural views.

• The Hills of Zion : "Dayton was having a roaring time. It was better than the circus."
• The Libido for the Ugly : "Out of the melting pot emerges a race which hates beauty."
• Literature and the Schoolma'm : "The essence of a sound style is that it cannot be reduced to rules."
• The Lower Depths : "The worst idiots, even among pedagogues, are the teachers of English."
• Portrait of an Ideal World : "All the great villainies of history have been perpetrated by sober men, and chiefly by teetotalers."

Christopher Morley  (1890-1957)

American writer Christopher Morley was popular for his literary columns in the "New York Evening Post," among other literary magazines. His many collections of essays and columns were "lighthearted, vigorous displays of the English language." 

• 1100 Words : "Let us be brief, crisp, packed with thought."
• The Art of Walking : "Sometimes it seems as though literature were a co-product of legs and head."
• A Morning in Marathon: "[W]e flashed onto the Hackensack marshes and into the fully minted gold of superb morning."
• On Going to Bed : "The happier creatures ... take the tide of sleep at the flood and are borne calmly and with gracious gentleness out to great waters of nothingness."

George Orwell  (1903-1950)

This British novelist, essayist and critic is best known for his novels "1984" and "Animal Farm." George Orwell's disdain for imperialism (he considered himself an anarchist) guided him in his life as well as through some of his writings.

• A Hanging : "We all began laughing again. ... The dead man was a hundred yards away."
• Why Are Beggars Despised? : "A beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a businessman, getting his living."

Dorothy Parker  (1893-1967)

Witty American poet and short-story writer Dorothy Parker began as an editorial assistant at "Vogue" and eventually became the book reviewer known as the "Constant Reader" for "The New Yorker." Among her hundreds of works, Parker won the 1929 O. Henry Award for her short story "Big Blond."

• Good Souls: "They are fated to go through life, congenial pariahs. They live out their little lives, mingling with the world, yet never a part of it."
• Mrs. Post Enlarges on Etiquette : "As one delves deeper and deeper into  Etiquette , disquieting thoughts come."

Bertrand Russell  (1872-1970)

British philosopher and social reformer Bertrand Russell won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950 "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought." Russell was one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th century.

• In Praise of Idleness : "The road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work."

Margaret Sanger  (1879-1966)

American activist Margaret Sanger was a sex educator, nurse and women's rights advocate. She began the first feminist publication, "The Woman Rebel," in 1914. 

• The Turbid Ebb and Flow of Misery: "My own cozy and comfortable family existence was becoming a reproach to me."

George Bernard Shaw  (1856-1950)

An Irish dramatist and critic, George Bernard Shaw was also a socialist propagandist and winner of the 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature (which he didn't receive until 1926) for "his work which is marked by both idealism and beauty." Shaw wrote more than 60 plays during his lifetime.

• Preface to Pygmalion: "It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him."
• She Would Have Enjoyed It: "Why does a funeral always sharpen one's sense of humor?"
• Why Law Is Indispensable: "Laws deaden the conscience of individuals by relieving them of responsibility."
• The Art of Political Lying : "Considering that natural disposition in many men to lie, and in multitudes to believe, I have been perplexed what to do with that maxim so frequent in everybody's mouth, that truth will at last prevail."
• Hints Toward an Essay on Conversation : "This degeneracy of conversation ... hath been owing, among other causes, to the custom arisen, for sometime past, of excluding women from any share in our society."
• A Meditation Upon a Broomstick : "But a broomstick is an emblem of a tree standing on its head."

Henry David Thoreau  (1817-1862)

American essayist, poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau is most known for his masterful work, "Walden," about living a life close to nature. He was a dedicated abolitionist and a strong practitioner of civil disobedience.

• The Battle of the Ants : "I never learned which party was victorious, nor the cause of the war."
• The Landlord: "If we do not look up to the Landlord, we look round for him on all emergencies, for he is a man of infinite experience, who unites hands with wit."
• The Last Days of John Brown : "[T]he one great rule of composition--and if I were a professor of rhetoric I should insist on this--is, to  speak the truth ."

James Thurber  (1894-1961)

American author and illustrator James Thurber is best known for his contributions to "The New Yorker." Via his contributions to the magazine, his cartoons became some of the most popular in the United States.

• The Subjunctive Mood : "Husbands are suspicious of all subjunctives. Wives should avoid them."
• Which: "Never monkey with 'which.'"

Anthony Trollope  (1815-1882)

British author Anthony Trollope is best known for his writing in the Victorian Era--some of his work includes a series of novels known as "The Chronicles of Barsetshire." Trollope also wrote on political, social and gender issues.

• The Plumber : "The plumber is doubtless aware that he is odious. He feels himself, like Dickens's turnpike-man, to be the enemy of mankind."

Mark Twain  (1835-1910)

Mark Twain was an American humorist, journalist, lecturer and novelist best known for his classic American novels "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." With his wit and grand telling of tales, Twain is nothing short of an American national treasure. 

• Advice to Youth : "Always obey your parents, when they are present."
• Corn-Pone Opinions : "Tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is."
• The Danger of Lying in Bed : "The danger isn't in traveling by rail, but in trusting to those deadly beds."
• A Fable : "You can find in a text whatever you bring."
• Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences : " Deerslayer  is just simply a literary delirium tremens."
• The Lowest Animal : "[W]e have descended and degenerated ... till we have reached the bottom stage of development."
• On the Decay of the Art of Lying: "Lying is universal: we all do it; we all must do it."
• Two Ways of Seeing a River : "All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river!"
• Unconscious Plagiarism : "[P]ride protects a man from deliberately stealing other people's ideas."

H.G. Wells  (1866-1944)

British author and historian H.G. Wells is best known for his works of science fiction, including "The Time Machine," "The First Men in the Moon" and "The War of the Worlds." Wells wrote an astounding 161 full-length books. 

• For Freedom of Spelling: The Discovery of an Art: "Why should correct spelling be the one absolutely essential literary merit?"
• Of Conversation: An Apology: "I am no blowfly to buzz my way through the universe."
• The Pleasure of Quarrelling : "Without quarreling you have not fully appreciated your fellow-man."
• The Possible Collapse of Civilisation: "Modern warfare is an insanity, not a sane business proposition."
• The Writing of Essays: "The art of the essayist ... may be learnt in a brief ten minutes or so."

Walt Whitman  (1819-1892)

American poet and journalist Walt Whitman's verse collection "Leaves of Grass" is an American literature landmark. Ralph Waldo Emerson praised the collection as "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom" America had yet contributed.

• A Glimpse of War's Hell Scenes: "There was no exultation, very little said, almost nothing, yet every man there contributed his shot."
• Slang in America : "Language in the largest sense ... is really the greatest of studies."
• Street Yarn: "Come and walk in New York streets."

Virginia Woolf  (1882-1941)

British author Virginia Woolf may be best known for her modernist classics "Mrs. Dalloway" and "To the Lighthouse." But she also produced feminist texts such as "A Room of One's Own" and "Three Guineas" and wrote pioneering essays on the politics of power, artistic theory and literary history.

• The Decay of Essay Writing : "Under the decent veil of print one can indulge one's egoism to the full."
• The Modern Essay : "The essay must lap us about and draw its curtain across the world."
• The Patron and the Crocus : "Be sure you choose your patron wisely."
• Street Haunting: A London Adventure : "Into each of these lives one could penetrate a little way."
• Writing for My Eye Only: "I can trace some increase of ease in my professional writing which I attribute to my casual half hours after tea."
• Definition and Examples of Humorous Essays
• Talking Together: An Introduction to Conversation Analysis
• The Essay: History and Definition
• An Overview of Classical Rhetoric
• Of Travel by Francis Bacon
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• What Is Enlightenment Rhetoric?
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• Mark Twain's Top 10 Writing Tips
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• Ted Sorensen on the Kennedy Style of Speech-Writing
• The Art of Public Speaking
• What Are the Different Types and Characteristics of Essays?
• Division: Outlining the Parts of a Speech
• The Difference Between an Article and an Essay

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The 75+ Best Essayists Of All Time, Ranked

Vote up the absolute greatest essayists.

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The Most Anthologized Essays of the Last 25 Years

In which joan didion appears more than once.

Depending on who you are, the word “essay” may make you squirm. After all, here in America at least, our introduction to the essay often comes complete with five paragraphs and “repeat but rephrase” and other soul-killing rules. But in actuality, essays are nothing like the staid, formulaic, boring things they make you write in high school. They’re all over the place. They’re wild. Or at least they can be. After all, the word essay comes from the French verb essayer , which means “to try.” Essays are merely attempts, at expression, or at proof; they claim to be nothing more. I’ve always thought that was lovely.

For this list, I looked at 14 essay anthologies, plus the three volumes of Lee Gutkind’s The Best Creative Nonfiction and John D’Agata’s three-part survey of the form ( The Next American Essay, The Lost Origins of the Essay , and The Making of the American Essay ), for a total of 20 books published between 1991 and 2016. I ignored all themed anthologies, as well as any limited to a specific year or publication. This is the last survey of anthologies in a series—earlier this month, I looked at the most anthologized short stories and the most anthologized poems —and considering all three lists together affords the ability to compare the way the different forms are canonized and read in America.

Of the three, I was most surprised by the data here. The essay is perhaps the most ravenous of forms, but these anthologies included letters, speeches (notably, a fair number of presidential addresses), excerpts from longer, reported works of non-fiction, and a number of works that I consider stories (like Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl,” which most agree is a short story, and some argue is a poem, but is certainly not an essay) or even actual poetry (John D’Agata, I know you’re a rebel and all, but “ For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffrey ,” while incredible, is not an essay). On the other hand, several essays that I consider top-notch classics didn’t make the cut (like Jo Ann Beard’s “The Fourth State of Matter,” and Gay Talese’s “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” which each appear only once in all the anthologies I surveyed). And Michel de Montaigne, who essentially coined the term, is only feebly represented. The better news is that five of the nine most anthologized essays are by writers of color, which is significantly better than either of the other lists do in that regard.

Below, I’ve separated my findings into four lists: the most anthologized essays (this should be self-explanatory), the most anthologized essayists (the authors with the most essays total across the anthologies), the most widely anthologized essayists (the authors with the most discrete essays across the anthologies), and the one hit wonders (those essays that were their authors only piece represented across the anthologies, albeit multiple times). At the end, there’s the full list, consisting of all duplicated essays and all essayists who had at least three pieces among the books I surveyed.

Most Anthologized Essays

Nine inclusions:

“Once More to the Lake,” E. B. White

Seven inclusions:

“Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King, Jr.

Six inclusions:

“How it Feels to be Colored Me,” Zora Neale Hurston “A Modest Proposal,” Jonathan Swift “Mother Tongue,” Amy Tan “The Death of the Moth,” Virginia Woolf

Five inclusions:

“Stranger in the Village,” James Baldwin “No Name Woman,” Maxine Hong Kingston “Shooting an Elephant,” George Orwell

Four inclusions:

“On Keeping a Notebook,” Joan Didion “The Search for Marvin Gardens,” John McPhee “The Way to Rainy Mountain,” N. Scott Momaday

Three inclusions:

“Graduation,” Maya Angelou “Notes of a Native Son,” James Baldwin “The Pain Scale,” Eula Biss “Seeing,” Annie Dillard “Learning to Read,” Frederick Douglass “Of the Coming of John,” W.E.B. Du Bois from Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America , Barbara Ehrenreich “On Dumpster Diving,” Lars Eighner “The Crack-up,” F. Scott Fitzgerald “Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of Dinosaurs,” Stephen Jay Gould “Illumination Rounds,” Michael Herr “Salvation,” Langston Hughes “The Declaration of Independence,” Thomas Jefferson “The Undertaking,” Thomas Lynch “Aria: a Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood,” Richard Rodriguez “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions,” Elizabeth Cady Stanton “Black Men and Public Space,” Brent Staples “Civil Disobedience,” Henry David Thoreau “Consider the Lobster,” David Foster Wallace “Yeager,” Tom Wolfe

Two inclusions:

from Two or Three Things I Know for Sure , Dorothy Allison “How To Tame a Wild Tongue,” Gloria Anzaldúa “Graven Images,” Saul Bellow “Time and Distance Overcome,” Eula Biss “I Want a Wife,” Judy Brady “Why Don’t We Complain?,” William F. Buckley Jr. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” Nicolas Carr “The Dream,” Winston Churchill “Remarks to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women Plenary Session,” Hillary Rodham Clinton “Silent Dancing,” Judith Ortiz Cofer “Music Is My Bag: Confessions of a Lapsed Oboist,” Meghan Daum “The White Album,” Joan Didion “On Going Home,” Joan Didion “On Morality,” Joan Didion “Total eclipse,” Annie Dillard “Living Like Weasels,” Annie Dillard from An American Childhood , Annie Dillard “Somehow Form a Family,” Tony Earley “Life with Daughters: Watching the Miss America Pageant,” Gerald Early “The Solace of Open Spaces,” Gretel Ehrlich “Ways We Lie,” Stephanie Ericsson “Young Hunger,” M.F.K. Fisher “When Doctors Make Mistakes,” Atul Gawande “He and I,” Natalia Ginzburg “Mirrorings,” Lucy Grealy “The Lost Childhood,” Graham Greene “Apotheosis of Martin Luther King,” Elizabeth Hardwick “On the Pleasure of Hating,” William Hazlitt “The Courage of Turtles,” Edward Hoagland “A Small Place,” Jamaica Kincaid “Dream Children: a Reverie,” Charles Lamb “Coming Home Again,” Chang-Rae Lee “On Being a Cripple,” Nancy Mairs “Of Some Verses on Virgil,” Michel de Montaigne “Two Ways to Belong in America,” Bharati Mukherjee “Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney,” Barack Obama “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell “The Allegory of the Cave,” Plato “Oranges and Sweet Sister Boy,” Judy Ruiz “Under the Influence,” Scott Russell Sanders “The Men We Carry in our Minds,” Scott Russell Sanders “Letter to President Pierce, 1855,” Chief Seattle “Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective,” Leslie Marmon Silko “What Should a Billionaire Give—and What Should You?,” Peter Singer “A Century of Cinema,” Susan Sontag “Regarding the Pain of Others,” Susan Sontag “Decolonizing the Mind,” Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o “Walking,” Henry David Thoreau “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For,” Henry David Thoreau “Ain’t I a Woman?,” Sojourner Truth “Advice to Youth,” Mark Twain “In Search of our Mothers’ Gardens,” Alice Walker “Writing and Analyzing a Story,” Eudora Welty “The Clan of One-Breasted Women,” Terry Tempest Williams “A Preface to Persius,” Edmund Wilson “In Search of a Room of One’s Own,” Virginia Woolf

The Most Anthologized Essayists ( the authors with most essays published among the anthologies )

Sixteen essays: Joan Didion

Fourteen essays: Annie Dillard

Thirteen essays: Virginia Woolf

Eleven essays: James Baldwin George Orwell E. B. White

Nine essays: Richard Rodriguez Henry David Thoreau

Eight essays: Martin Luther King, Jr. Susan Sontag Jonathan Swift

Seven essays: Samuel Johnson Michel de Montaigne Mark Twain Eudora Welty

Six essays: Francis Bacon Barbara Ehrenreich Stephen Jay Gould Maxine Hong Kingston Zora Neale Hurston Charles Lamb John McPhee David Sedaris Amy Tan

Five essays: Maya Angelou Eula Biss M.F.K. Fisher Atul Gawande William Hazlitt Jamaica Kincaid Nancy Mairs H.L. Mencken N. Scott Momaday Adrienne Rich Lewis Thomas Alice Walker David Foster Wallace Tom Wolfe

The Most Widely Anthologized Essayists  ( authors with most discrete essays published among the anthologies )

Ten essays:

Joan Didion

Nine essays:

Annie Dillard

Seven essays:

Samuel Johnson Richard Rodriguez Virginia Woolf

Six essays:

Sir Francis Bacon Michel de Montaigne George Orwell David Sedaris Seneca Susan Sontag Mark Twain Eudora Welty

Five essays:

James Baldwin Charles Lamb H.L. Mencken Adrienne Rich Lewis Thomas Henry David Thoreau

Four essays:

Max Beerbohm G.K. Chesterton Barbara Ehrenreich M.F.K. Fisher Atul Gawande Stephen Jay Gould William Hazlitt Jamaica Kincaid Phillip Lopate Barry Lopez Nancy Mairs Cynthia Ozick Anna Quindlen Scott Russell Sanders Robert Louis Stevenson James Thurber Alice Walker

One Hit Wonders ( authors with a only single essay represented across the anthologies )

“How it Feels to be Colored Me,” Zora Neale Hurston “Mother Tongue,” Amy Tan

“On Dumpster Diving,” Lars Eighner “Illumination Rounds,” Michael Herr “The Declaration of Independence,” Thomas Jefferson “The Undertaking,” Thomas Lynch

from Two or Three Things I Know for Sure , Dorothy Allison “How To Tame a Wild Tongue,” Gloria Anzaldúa “Graven Images,” Saul Bellow “I Want a Wife,” Judy Brady “Why Don’t We Complain?,” William F. Buckley Jr. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” Nicolas Carr “Remarks to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women Plenary Session,” Hillary Rodham Clinton “Music Is My Bag: Confessions of a Lapsed Oboist,” Meghan Daum “Somehow Form a Family,” Tony Earley “Ways We Lie,” Stephanie Ericsson “He and I,” Natalia Ginzburg “Mirrorings,” Lucy Grealy “The Lost Childhood,” Graham Greene “Apotheosis of Martin Luther King,” Elizabeth Hardwick “Coming Home Again,” Chang-Rae Lee “Two Ways to Belong in America,” Bharati Mukherjee “The Allegory of the Cave,” Plato “Oranges and Sweet Sister Boy,” Judy Ruiz “Letter to President Pierce, 1855,” Chief Seattle “Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective,” Leslie Marmon Silko “Decolonizing the Mind,” Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o “Ain’t I a Woman?,” Sojourner Truth “The Clan of One-Breasted Women,” Terry Tempest Williams

The Full List ( all essays by writers with at least one duplication or three disparate essays anthologized )

“The Great American Desert,” Edward Abbey “The Cowboy and his Cow,” Edward Abbey “Havasu,” Edward Abbey

“Superman and Me,” Sherman Alexie “Indian Education,” Sherman Alexie “Captivity,” Sherman Alexie

from Two or Three Things I Know for Sure , Dorothy Allison (x 2)

“Graduation,” Maya Angelou (x 3) “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Maya Angelou “Champion of the World,” Maya Angelou

“How To Tame a Wild Tongue,” Gloria Anzaldúa (x 2)

“Of Truth,” Sir Francis Bacon “Of Revenge,” Sir Francis Bacon “Of Boldness,” Sir Francis Bacon “Of Innovations,” Sir Francis Bacon “Of Masques and Triumphs,” Sir Francis Bacon “Antithesis of Things,” Sir Francis Bacon

“Stranger in the Village,” James Baldwin (x 5) “Notes of a Native Son,” James Baldwin (x 3) “Alas, Poor Richard,” James Baldwin “The Fight: Patterson vs. Liston,” James Baldwin “Equal in Paris,” James Baldwin

“Going Out for a Walk,” Max Beerbohm “Laughter,” Max Beerbohm “Something Defeasible,” Max Beerbohm “A Clergyman,” Max Beerbohm

“Graven Images,” Saul Bellow (x 2)

“What Reconciles Me,” John Berger “Photographs of Agony,” John Berger “Turner and the Barber’s Shop,” John Berger

“The Pain Scale,” Eula Biss (x 3) “Time and Distance Overcome,” Eula Biss (x 2)

“Blindness,” Jorge Luis Borges “Borges and I,” Jorge Luis Borges “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Teritus,” Jorge Luis Borges

“I Want a Wife,” Judy Brady (x 2)

“Why Don’t We Complain?,” William F. Buckley Jr. (x 2)

“Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” Nicholas Carr (x 2)

“The Glass Essay,” Anne Carson from Short Talks , Anne Carson “Kinds of Water,” Anne Carson

“Marginal world,” Rachel Carson “The Obligation to Endure,” Rachel Carson “A Fable for Tomorrow,” Rachel Carson

“A Piece of Chalk,” G.K. Chesterton “On Running After One’s Hat,” G.K. Chesterton “A Defense of Penny Dreadfuls,” G.K. Chesterton “On Sandals and Simplicity,” G.K. Chesterton

“The Dream,” Winston Churchill (x 2) from “We Shall Fight on the Beaches,” Winston Churchill from “This Was Their Finest Hour,” Winston Churchill

“Silent Dancing,” Judith Ortiz Cofer (x 2) “More Room,” Judith Ortiz Cofer “Myth of the Latin Woman: I just met a girl named Maria,” Judith Ortiz Cofer

“Another Country,” Edwidge Danticat “Uncle Moïse,” Edwidge Danticat “Westbury Court,” Edwidge Danticat

“Music Is My Bag: Confessions of a Lapsed Oboist,” Meghan Daum (x 2)

“On Keeping a Notebook,” Joan Didion (x 4) “The White Album,” Joan Didion (x 2) “On Going Home,” Joan Didion (x 2) “On Morality,” Joan Didion (x 2) “Goodbye to All That,” Joan Didion “In Bed,” Joan Didion “At the Dam,” Joan Didion “Georgia O’Keeffe,” Joan Didion from Salvador , Joan Didion “The Santa Ana,” Joan Didion

“Seeing,” Annie Dillard (x 3) “Total Eclipse,” Annie Dillard (x 2) “Living Like Weasels,” Annie Dillard (x 2) rom An American Childhood , Annie Dillard (x 2) “Sight into Insight,” Annie Dillard “On Foot in Virginia’s Roanoke Valley,” Annie Dillard from For the Time Being , Annie Dillard “The Chase,” Annie Dillard “The Stunt Pilot,” Annie Dillard

“Learning to Read,” Frederick Douglass (x 3) from “Fourth of July Oration,” Frederick Douglass

“Of the Coming of John,” W.E.B. Du Bois (x 3) “A Mild Suggestion,” W.E.B. Du Bois

“Somehow Form a Family,” Tony Earley (x 2)

“Life with Daughters: Watching the Miss America Pageant,” Gerald Early (x 2) “Digressions,” Gerald Early

from Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America , Barbara Ehrenreich (x 3) “Serving in Florida,” Barbara Ehrenreich “Cultural Baggage,” Barbara Ehrenreich “War Without Humans: Modern Blood Rites Revisited,” Barbara Ehrenreich

“The Solace of Open Spaces,” Gretel Ehrlich (x 2) from the Journals, Gretel Ehrlich “Lijiang,” Gretel Ehrlich

“On Dumpster Diving,” Lars Eighner (x 3)

“Brown Wasps,” Loren Eiseley “The Angry Winter,” Loren Eiseley “The Snout,” Loren Eiseley

“Tradition and the Individual Talent,” T.S. Eliot “Marie Lloyd,” T.S. Eliot “The Dry Salvages,” T.S. Eliot

“The American Scholar,” Ralph Waldo Emerson “The Conservative,” Ralph Waldo Emerson “Nature,” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Ways We Lie,” Stephanie Ericsson (x 2)

“Young Hunger,” M.F.K. Fisher (x 2) “Once a Tramp, Always,” M.F.K. Fisher “The Flaw,” M.F.K. Fisher “Paris Journal,” M.F.K. Fisher

“The Crack-up,” F. Scott Fitzgerald (x 3) “Sleeping and Waking,” F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Learning to Write,” Benjamin Franklin from the Autobiography , Benjamin Franklin “The Levee,” Benjamin Franklin

“When Doctors Make Mistakes,” Atul Gawande (x 2) from “Overkill,” Atul Gawande “Final Cut,” Atul Gawande “Why Boston’s Hospitals Were Ready,” Atul Gawande

“He and I,” Natalia Ginzburg (x 2)

“Java Man,” Malcolm Gladwell “None of the Above: What I.Q. Doesn’t Tell You about Race,” Malcolm Gladwell “The Tipping Point,” Malcolm Gladwell

“Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of Dinosaurs,” Stephen Jay Gould (x 3) “Creation Myths of Cooperstown,” Stephen Jay Gould “A Biological Homage to Mickey Mouse,” Stephen Jay Gould “The Median Isn’t the Message,” Stephen Jay Gould

“Mirrorings,” Lucy Grealy (x 2)

“The Lost Childhood,” Graham Greene (x 2)

“Apotheosis of Martin Luther King,” Elizabeth Hardwick (x 2)

“No Name Woman,” Maxine Hong Kingston (x 5) “Tongue-Tied,” Maxine Hong Kingston

“On the Pleasure of Hating,” William Hazlitt (x 2) “On Going a Journey,” William Hazlitt “The Fight,” William Hazlitt “Brummelliana,” William Hazlitt

“Illumination Rounds,” Michael Herr (x 3)

“The Courage of Turtles,” Edward Hoagland (x 2) “The Threshold and the Jolt of Pain,” Edward Hoagland “Heaven and Nature,” Edward Hoagland

“Salvation,” Langston Hughes (x 3) “Bop,” Langston Hughes

“How it Feels to Be Colored Me,” Zora Neale Hurston (x 6)

“The Declaration of Independence,” Thomas Jefferson (x 3)

“The Boarding house,” Samuel Johnson “The Solitude of the Country,” Samuel Johnson “Dignity and Uses of Biography,” Samuel Johnson “Conversation,” Samuel Johnson “Debtors’ Prisons (1),” Samuel Johnson “Debtors’ Prisons (2),” Samuel Johnson “To Reign Once More in Our Native Country,” Samuel Johnson

“A Small Place,” Jamaica Kincaid (x 2) “On Seeing England for the First Time,” Jamaica Kincaid “Girl,” Jamaica Kincaid “Biography of a Dress,” Jamaica Kincaid

“Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King, Jr. (x 7) “I Have a Dream,” Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Dream Children: a Reverie,” Charles Lamb (x 2) “New Year’s Eve,” Charles Lamb “A Chapter on Ears,” Charles Lamb “The Superannuated Man,” Charles Lamb from “On Some of the Old Actors,” Charles Lamb

“Coming Home Again,” Chang-Rae Lee (x 2)

“Second Inaugural Address,” Abraham Lincoln (x 3) “First Inaugural Address,” Abraham Lincoln “The Gettysburg Address,” Abraham Lincoln

“Against Joie de Vivre,” Phillip Lopate “Portrait of my Body,” Phillip Lopate “On the Necessity of Turning Oneself into a Character,” Phillip Lopate “The Dead Father: A Rememberance of Donald Barthelme,” Phillip Lopate

“Flight,” Barry Lopez “Grown Men,” Barry Lopez “The Raven,” Barry Lopez “Landscape and Narrative,” Barry Lopez

“The Fourth of July,” Audre Lorde “Poetry is Not a Luxury,” Audre Lorde “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism,” Audre Lorde

“The Undertaking,” Thomas Lynch (x 3)

“On Being a Cripple,” Nancy Mairs (x 2) “Ron her Son,” Nancy Mairs “Body in Trouble,” Nancy Mairs “Disability,” Nancy Mairs

“My Confession,” Mary McCarthy “Artists in Uniform,” Mary McCarthy “Yonder Peasant, Who Is He?,” Mary McCarthy

“The Case for Single-Child Families,” Bill McKibben “Waste Not, Want Not,” Bill McKibben “Curbing Nature’s Paparazzi,” Bill McKibben

“The Search for Marvin Gardens,” John McPhee (x 4) “Under the Snow,” John McPhee from Annals of the Former World , John McPhee

“On Being an American,” H.L. Mencken “Hills of Zion,” H.L. Mencken “Reflections on Journalism,” H.L. Mencken “The Libido for the Ugly,” H.L. Mencken “Funeral march,” H.L. Mencken

“The Way to Rainy Mountain,” N. Scott Momaday (x 4) “An American Land Ethic,” N. Scott Momaday

“Of some verses on Virgil,” Michel de Montaigne (x 2) “Of books,” Michel de Montaigne “Of a monstrous child,” Michel de Montaigne from “On Cannibals,” Michel de Montaigne “Of Democritus and Heraclitus,” Michel de Montaigne “Of Experience,” Michel de Montaigne

“Two Ways to Belong in America,” Bharati Mukherjee (x 2)

“This is Not Who We Are,” Naomi Shihab Nye “Thank You in Arabic,” Naomi Shihab Nye “One Village,” Naomi Shihab Nye

“Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney,” Barack Obama (x 2) “A More Perfect Union,” Barack Obama

“Shooting an Elephant,” George Orwell (x 5) “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell (x 2) “Such, Such were the Joys,” George Orwell “Reflections on Gandhi,” George Orwell “The Moon under Water,” George Orwell “A Hanging,” George Orwell

“Drugstore in Winter,” Cynthia Ozick “The Lesson of the Master,” Cynthia Ozick “Highbrow Blues,” Cynthia Ozick “Portrait of the Essay as a Warm Body,” Cynthia Ozick

“The Allegory of the Cave,” Plato (x 2)

“An Animal’s Place,” Michael Pollan “Why “Natural” Doesn’t Mean Anything Anymore,” Michael Pollan “What’s Eating America,” Michael Pollan

“Future is Now,” Katherine Anne Porter “St. Augustine and the Bullfight,” Katherine Anne Porter “The Necessary Enemy,” Katherine Anne Porter

“Between the Sexes, a Great Divide,” Anna Quindlen “Stuff Is Not Salvation,” Anna Quindlen “The War We Haven’t Won,” Anna Quindlen “Homeless,” Anna Quindlen

“Split at the Root,” Adrienne Rich “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying,” Adrienne Rich “Taking Women Students Seriously,” Adrienne Rich “Claiming an Education,” Adrienne Rich from “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Adrienne Rich

“Aria: a Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood,” Richard Rodriguez (x 3) “Late Victorians,” Richard Rodriguez “Going Home Again,” Richard Rodriguez from Crossing Borders , Richard Rodriguez from Darling , Richard Rodriguez “Private Language, Public Language,” Richard Rodriguez “‘Blaxicans’ and Other Reinvented Americans,” Richard Rodriguez

“Oranges and Sweet Sister Boy,” Judy Ruiz (x 2)

“Under the Influence,” Scott Russell Sanders (x 2 ) “The Men we Carry in our Minds,” Scott Russell Sanders (x 2) “The Singular First Person,” Scott Russell Sanders “The Inheritance of Tools,” Scott Russell Sanders

“Letter to President Pierce, 1855,” Chief Seattle (x 2)

“Repeat After Me,” David Sedaris “Loggerheads,” David Sedaris “A Plague of Tics,” David Sedaris “Guy Walks into a Bar Car,” David Sedaris “The Drama Bug,” David Sedaris “Remembering My Childhood on the Continent of Africa,” David Sedaris

“On Noise,” Seneca “Asthma,” Seneca “Scipio’s Villa,” Seneca “Slaves,” Seneca “Epistle 47,” Seneca “Sick,” Seneca

“Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective,” Leslie Marmon Silko (x 2)

“What Should a Billionaire Give—and What Should You?,” Peter Singer (x 2) from Animal Liberation , Peter Singer

“A Century of Cinema,” Susan Sontag (x 2) “Regarding the Pain of Others,” Susan Sontag (x 2) “Notes on ‘Camp,'” Susan Sontag from “Freak Show,” Susan Sontag “Unguided Tour,” Susan Sontag from “AIDS and Its Metaphors,” Susan Sontag.

“Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions,” Elizabeth Cady Stanton (x 3) “Seneca Falls Keynote Address,” Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“Black Men and Public Space,” Brent Staples (x 3) “Why Colleges Shower Their Students with A’s,” Brent Staples

“Aes Triplex,” Robert Louis Stevenson “The Lantern-bearers,” Robert Louis Stevenson “An Apology for Idlers,” Robert Louis Stevenson “On Marriage,” Robert Louis Stevenson

“A Modest Proposal,” Jonathan Swift (x 6) “Good Manners and Good Breeding,” Jonathan Swift “A Meditation upon a Broom-stick,” Jonathan Swift

“Mother Tongue,” Amy Tan (x 6)

“Decolonizing the Mind,” Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (x 2)

“Lives of a Cell,” Lewis Thomas “Notes on Punctuation,” Lewis Thomas “To Err is Human,” Lewis Thomas “Becoming a Doctor,” Lewis Thomas “The Medusa and the Snail,” Lewis Thomas

“Civil Disobedience,” Henry David Thoreau (x 3) “Walking,” Henry David Thoreau (x 2) “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For,” Henry David Thoreau (x 2) “The Battle of the Ants,” Henry David Thoreau “Night and Moonlight,” Henry David Thoreau

“The Secret Life of James Thurber,” James Thurber “Sex Ex Machina,” James Thurber “My Own Ten Rules for a Happy Marriage,” James Thurber “Snapshot of a Dog,” James Thurber

“Ain’t I a Woman?,” Sojourner Truth (x 2)

“Advice to Youth,” Mark Twain (x 2) “Corn-pone Opinions,” Mark Twain “Italian without a master,” Mark Twain “Thoughts of God,” Mark Twain from Life on the Mississippi “Letters from the Earth,” Mark Twain

“In Search of our Mothers’ Gardens,” Alice Walker (x 2) “Looking for Zora,” Alice Walker “Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self,” Alice Walker “Becoming What We’re Called,” Alice Walker

“Consider the Lobster,” David Foster Wallace (x 3) “Ticket to the Fair,” David Foster Wallace “Shipping Out: On the (Nearly Lethal) Comforts of a Luxury Cruise,” David Foster Wallace

“Once More to the Lake,” E.B. White (x 9) “The Ring of Time,” E.B. White “About Myself,” E.B. White

“Writing and Analyzing a Story,” Eudora Welty (x 2) “Sweet Devouring,” Eudora Welty “Clamorous to Learn,” Eudora Welty “One Writer’s Beginnings,” Eudora Welty “The Little Store,” Eudora Welty “Listening,” Eudora Welty

“The Clan of One-Breasted Women,” Terry Tempest Williams (x 2)

“A Preface to Persius,” Edmund Wilson (x 2) “Old Stone House,” Edmund Wilson “Life is a Narrative,” Edmund Wilson

“Yeager,” Tom Wolfe (x 3) “Putting Daddy On,” Tom Wolfe “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby,” Tom Wolfe

The Death of the Moth,” Virginia Woolf (x 6) “In Search of a Room of One’s Own,” Virginia Woolf (x 2) “Leslie Stephen,” Virginia Woolf “Harriette Wilson,” Virginia Woolf “Ellen Terry,” Virginia Woolf “Street Haunting,” Virginia Woolf from Three Guineas , Virginia Woolf

Anthologies Surveyed:

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present , ed. Philip Lopate (1997); The Best American Essays of the Century, ed. Joyce Carol Oates and Robert Atwan (2001);  Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present , ed. Lex Williford and Michael Martone (2007);  The Norton Reader: An Anthology of Nonfiction , 14th edition, ed. Melissa Goldthwaite, Joseph Bizup, John Brereton, Anne Fernald, Linda Peterson (2015);  The Norton Book of Personal Essays , ed. Joseph Epstein (1997); The Best Creative Nonfiction , ed. Lee Gutkind, Volumes 1, 2, & 3 (2007); The Signet Book of American Essays , ed. M. Jerry Weiss and Helen Weiss (2006); The Oxford Book of Essays , ed. John Gross (1991); 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology , Samuel Cohen (2011); The Eloquent Essay: An Anthology of Classic & Creative Nonfiction , ed. John Loughery (2000); The Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose , Third Edition, ed. Laura Buzzard, Don LePan, Nora Ruddock, Alexandria Stuart (2016); The Next American Essay , ed. John D’Agata (2003) & The Lost Origins of the Essay , ed. John D’Agata (2009) & The Making of the American Essay , ed. John D’Agata (2016); Contemporary Creative Nonfiction , ed. B. Minh Nguyen and Porter Shreve (2005); Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: The Art of Truth , ed. Bill Roorbach (2001); 40 Model Essays , Second edition, ed. Jane E. Aaron and Ellen Kuhl Repetto (2003); The Seagull Reader: Essays , Third Edition, ed. Joseph Kelly (2015)

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The best essay collections to read now

From advice on friendship and understanding modern life to getting a grasp on coronavirus, these books offer insight on life. 

What better way to get into the work of a writer than through a collection of their essays? 

These seven collections, from novelists and critics alike, address a myriad of subjects from friendship to how colleges are dealing with sexual assaults on campus to race and racism. 

Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino (2019)

As a staff writer at The New Yorker , Jia Tolentino has explored everything from a rise in youth vaping to the ongoing cultural reckoning about sexual assault. Her first book Trick Mirror takes some of those pieces for The New Yorker as well as new work to form what is one of the sharpest collections of cultural criticism today.

Using herself and her own coming of age as a lens for many of the essays, Tolentino turns her pen and her eye to everything from her generation’s obsession with extravagant weddings to how college campuses deal with sexual assault.

If you’re looking for an insight into millennial life, then Trick Mirror should be on your to-read list.

In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens by Alice Walker (1983)

Sometimes essays collected from a sprawling period of a successful writer’s life can feel like a hasty addition to a bibliography; a smash-and-grab of notebook flotsam. Not so In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens , from which one can truly understand the sheer range of the Pulitzer Prize winner’s range of study and activism. From Walker’s first published piece of non-fiction (for which she won a prize, and spent her winnings on cut peonies) to more elegiac pieces about her heritage, Walker’s thoughts on feminism (which she terms “womanism”) and the Civil Rights Movement remain grippingly pertinent 50 years on.

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris (2000)

That David Sedaris’s ascent to literary stardom happened later in his life – his breakthrough collection of humour essays was released when he was 44 – suited the author’s writing style perfectly. Me Talk Pretty One Day is both a painfully funny account of his childhood and an enduring snapshot of mid-forties malaise. First story ‘Go Carolina’, about his attempt to transcend a childhood lisp, is told from a perfect distance and with all the worldliness necessary to milk every drop of tragic, cringeworthy humour from his childhood. It never falters from there: by the book’s second half, in which Sedaris is living in France, he’s firmly established his niche, writing about the ways that even snobs experience utter humiliation ­– and Me Talk Pretty One Day is all the more human for it. 

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40 Best Essays of All Time (Including Links & Writing Tips)

I had little money (buying forty collections of essays was out of the question) so I’ve found them online instead. I’ve hacked through piles of them, and finally, I’ve found the great ones. Now I want to share the whole list with you (with the addition of my notes about writing). Each item on the list has a direct link to the essay, so please click away and indulge yourself. Also, next to each essay, there’s an image of the book that contains the original work.

About this essay list:

40 best essays of all time (with links and writing tips), 1. david sedaris – laugh, kookaburra, writing tips from the essay:, 2. charles d’ambrosio – documents.

Do you think your life punches you in the face all too often? After reading this essay, you will change your mind. Reading about loss and hardships often makes us sad at first, but then enables us to feel grateful for our lives . D’Ambrosio shares his documents (poems, letters) that had a major impact on his life, and brilliantly shows how not to let go of the past.

3. E. B. White – Once more to the lake

4. zadie smith – fail better.

Aspiring writers feel tremendous pressure to perform. The daily quota of words often turns out to be nothing more than gibberish. What then? Also, should the writer please the reader or should she be fully independent? What does it mean to be a writer, anyway? This essay is an attempt to answer these questions, but its contents are not only meant for scribblers. Within it, you’ll find some great notes about literary criticism, how we treat art , and the responsibility of the reader.

5. Virginia Woolf – Death of the Moth

6. meghan daum – my misspent youth, 7. roger ebert – go gentle into that good night.

Probably the greatest film critic of all time, Roger Ebert, tells us not to rage against the dying of the light. This essay is full of courage, erudition, and humanism. From it, we learn about what it means to be dying (Hitchens’ “Mortality” is another great work on that theme). But there’s so much more. It’s a great celebration of life too. It’s about not giving up, and sticking to your principles until the very end. It brings to mind the famous scene from Dead Poets Society where John Keating (Robin Williams) tells his students: “Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary”.

8. George Orwell – Shooting an Elephant

9. george orwell – a hanging, 10. christopher hitchens – assassins of the mind, 11. christopher hitchens – the new commandments, 12. phillip lopate – against joie de vivre, 13. philip larkin – the pleasure principle, 14. sigmund freud – thoughts for the times on war and death, 15. zadie smith – some notes on attunement.

“You are privy to a great becoming, but you recognize nothing” – Francis Dolarhyde. This one is about the elusiveness of change occurring within you. For Zadie, it was hard to attune to the vibes of Joni Mitchell – especially her Blue album. But eventually, she grew up to appreciate her genius, and all the other things changed as well. This top essay is all about the relationship between humans, and art. We shouldn’t like art because we’re supposed to. We should like it because it has an instantaneous, emotional effect on us. Although, according to Stansfield (Gary Oldman) in Léon, liking Beethoven is rather mandatory.

16. Annie Dillard – Total Eclipse

17. édouard levé – when i look at a strawberry, i think of a tongue, 18. gloria e. anzaldúa – how to tame a wild tongue, 19. kurt vonnegut – dispatch from a man without a country, 20. mary ruefle – on fear.

Most psychologists and gurus agree that fear is the greatest enemy of success or any creative activity. It’s programmed into our minds to keep us away from imaginary harm. Mary Ruefle takes on this basic human emotion with flair. She explores fear from so many angles (especially in the world of poetry-writing) that at the end of this personal essay, you will look at it, dissect it, untangle it, and hopefully be able to say “f**k you” the next time your brain is trying to stop you.

21. Susan Sontag – Against Interpretation

22. nora ephron – a few words about breasts, 23. carl sagan – does truth matter – science, pseudoscience, and civilization, 24. paul graham – how to do what you love, 25. john jeremiah sullivan – mister lytle, 26. joan didion – on self respect, 27. susan sontag – notes on camp, 28. ralph waldo emerson – self-reliance, 29. david foster wallace – consider the lobster, 30. david foster wallace – the nature of the fun.

The famous novelist and author of the most powerful commencement speech ever done is going to tell you about the joys and sorrows of writing a work of fiction. It’s like taking care of a mutant child that constantly oozes smelly liquids. But you love that child and you want others to love it too. It’s a very humorous account of what it means to be an author. If you ever plan to write a novel, you should read that one. And the story about the Chinese farmer is just priceless.

31. Margaret Atwood – Attitude

32. jo ann beard – the fourth state of matter, 33. terence mckenna – tryptamine hallucinogens and consciousness, 34. eudora welty – the little store, 35. john mcphee – the search for marvin gardens.

The Search for Marvin Gardens contains many layers of meaning. It’s a story about a Monopoly championship, but also, it’s the author’s search for the lost streets visible on the board of the famous board game. It also presents a historical perspective on the rise and fall of civilizations, and on Atlantic City, which once was a lively place, and then, slowly declined, the streets filled with dirt and broken windows.

36. Maxine Hong Kingston – No Name Woman

37. joan didion – on keeping a notebook, 38. joan didion – goodbye to all that, 39. george orwell – reflections on gandhi, 40. george orwell – politics and the english language, other essays you may find interesting, oliver sacks – on libraries, noam chomsky – the responsibility of intellectuals, sam harris – the riddle of the gun.

Sam Harris, now a famous philosopher and neuroscientist, takes on the problem of gun control in the United States. His thoughts are clear of prejudice. After reading this, you’ll appreciate the value of logical discourse overheated, irrational debate that more often than not has real implications on policy.

Tim Ferriss – Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide

Edward said – reflections on exile, richard feynman – it’s as simple as one, two, three…, rabindranath tagore – the religion of the forest, richard dawkins – letter to his 10-year-old daughter.

Every father should be able to articulate his philosophy of life to his children. With this letter that’s similar to what you find in the Paris Review essays , the famed atheist and defender of reason, Richard Dawkins, does exactly that. It’s beautifully written and stresses the importance of looking at evidence when we’re trying to make sense of the world.

Albert Camus – The Minotaur (or, The Stop In Oran)

Koty neelis – 21 incredible life lessons from anthony bourdain, lucius annaeus seneca – on the shortness of life, bertrand russell – in praise of idleness, james baldwin – stranger in the village.

It’s an essay on the author’s experiences as an African-American in a Swiss village, exploring race, identity, and alienation while highlighting the complexities of racial dynamics and the quest for belonging.

The Top 10 Essays Since 1950

Robert Atwan, the founder of The Best American Essays series, picks the 10 best essays of the postwar period. Links to the essays are provided when available.

Fortunately, when I worked with Joyce Carol Oates on The Best American Essays of the Century (that’s the last century, by the way), we weren’t restricted to ten selections. So to make my list of the top ten essays since 1950 less impossible, I decided to exclude all the great examples of New Journalism--Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Michael Herr, and many others can be reserved for another list. I also decided to include only American writers, so such outstanding English-language essayists as Chris Arthur and Tim Robinson are missing, though they have appeared in The Best American Essays series. And I selected essays , not essayists . A list of the top ten essayists since 1950 would feature some different writers.

To my mind, the best essays are deeply personal (that doesn’t necessarily mean autobiographical) and deeply engaged with issues and ideas. And the best essays show that the name of the genre is also a verb, so they demonstrate a mind in process--reflecting, trying-out, essaying.

James Baldwin, "Notes of a Native Son" (originally appeared in Harper’s , 1955)

“I had never thought of myself as an essayist,” wrote James Baldwin, who was finishing his novel Giovanni’s Room while he worked on what would become one of the great American essays. Against a violent historical background, Baldwin recalls his deeply troubled relationship with his father and explores his growing awareness of himself as a black American. Some today may question the relevance of the essay in our brave new “post-racial” world, though Baldwin considered the essay still relevant in 1984 and, had he lived to see it, the election of Barak Obama may not have changed his mind. However you view the racial politics, the prose is undeniably hypnotic, beautifully modulated and yet full of urgency. Langston Hughes nailed it when he described Baldwin’s “illuminating intensity.” The essay was collected in Notes of a Native Son courageously (at the time) published by Beacon Press in 1955.

Norman Mailer, "The White Negro" (originally appeared in Dissent , 1957)

An essay that packed an enormous wallop at the time may make some of us cringe today with its hyperbolic dialectics and hyperventilated metaphysics. But Mailer’s attempt to define the “hipster”–in what reads in part like a prose version of Ginsberg’s “Howl”–is suddenly relevant again, as new essays keep appearing with a similar definitional purpose, though no one would mistake Mailer’s hipster (“a philosophical psychopath”) for the ones we now find in Mailer’s old Brooklyn neighborhoods. Odd, how terms can bounce back into life with an entirely different set of connotations. What might Mailer call the new hipsters? Squares?

Read the essay here .

Susan Sontag, "Notes on 'Camp'" (originally appeared in Partisan Review , 1964)

Like Mailer’s “White Negro,” Sontag’s groundbreaking essay was an ambitious attempt to define a modern sensibility, in this case “camp,” a word that was then almost exclusively associated with the gay world. I was familiar with it as an undergraduate, hearing it used often by a set of friends, department store window decorators in Manhattan. Before I heard Sontag—thirty-one, glamorous, dressed entirely in black-- read the essay on publication at a Partisan Review gathering, I had simply interpreted “campy” as an exaggerated style or over-the-top behavior. But after Sontag unpacked the concept, with the help of Oscar Wilde, I began to see the cultural world in a different light. “The whole point of camp,” she writes, “is to dethrone the serious.” Her essay, collected in Against Interpretation (1966), is not in itself an example of camp.

John McPhee, "The Search for Marvin Gardens" (originally appeared in The New Yorker , 1972)

“Go. I roll the dice—a six and a two. Through the air I move my token, the flatiron, to Vermont Avenue, where dog packs range.” And so we move, in this brilliantly conceived essay, from a series of Monopoly games to a decaying Atlantic City, the once renowned resort town that inspired America’s most popular board game. As the games progress and as properties are rapidly snapped up, McPhee juxtaposes the well-known sites on the board—Atlantic Avenue, Park Place—with actual visits to their crumbling locations. He goes to jail, not just in the game but in fact, portraying what life has now become in a city that in better days was a Boardwalk Empire. At essay’s end, he finds the elusive Marvin Gardens. The essay was collected in Pieces of the Frame (1975).

Read the essay here (subscription required).

Joan Didion, "The White Album" (originally appeared in New West , 1979)

Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, and the Black Panthers, a recording session with Jim Morrison and the Doors, the San Francisco State riots, the Manson murders—all of these, and much more, figure prominently in Didion’s brilliant mosaic distillation (or phantasmagoric album) of California life in the late 1960s. Yet despite a cast of characters larger than most Hollywood epics, “The White Album” is a highly personal essay, right down to Didion’s report of her psychiatric tests as an outpatient in a Santa Monica hospital in the summer of 1968. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” the essay famously begins, and as it progresses nervously through cuts and flashes of reportage, with transcripts, interviews, and testimonies, we realize that all of our stories are questionable, “the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images.” Portions of the essay appeared in installments in 1968-69 but it wasn’t until 1979 that Didion published the complete essay in New West magazine; it then became the lead essay of her book, The White Album (1979).

Annie Dillard, "Total Eclipse" (originally appeared in Antaeus , 1982)

In her introduction to The Best American Essays 1988 , Annie Dillard claims that “The essay can do everything a poem can do, and everything a short story can do—everything but fake it.” Her essay “Total Eclipse” easily makes her case for the imaginative power of a genre that is still undervalued as a branch of imaginative literature. “Total Eclipse” has it all—the climactic intensity of short fiction, the interwoven imagery of poetry, and the meditative dynamics of the personal essay: “This was the universe about which we have read so much and never before felt: the universe as a clockwork of loose spheres flung at stupefying, unauthorized speeds.” The essay, which first appeared in Antaeus in 1982 was collected in Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982), a slim volume that ranks among the best essay collections of the past fifty years.

Phillip Lopate, "Against Joie de Vivre" (originally appeared in Ploughshares , 1986)

This is an essay that made me glad I’d started The Best American Essays the year before. I’d been looking for essays that grew out of a vibrant Montaignean spirit—personal essays that were witty, conversational, reflective, confessional, and yet always about something worth discussing. And here was exactly what I’d been looking for. I might have found such writing several decades earlier but in the 80s it was relatively rare; Lopate had found a creative way to insert the old familiar essay into the contemporary world: “Over the years,” Lopate begins, “I have developed a distaste for the spectacle of joie de vivre , the knack of knowing how to live.” He goes on to dissect in comic yet astute detail the rituals of the modern dinner party. The essay was selected by Gay Talese for The Best American Essays 1987 and collected in Against Joie de Vivre in 1989 .

Edward Hoagland, "Heaven and Nature" (originally appeared in Harper’s, 1988)

“The best essayist of my generation,” is how John Updike described Edward Hoagland, who must be one of the most prolific essayists of our time as well. “Essays,” Hoagland wrote, “are how we speak to one another in print—caroming thoughts not merely in order to convey a certain packet of information, but with a special edge or bounce of personal character in a kind of public letter.” I could easily have selected many other Hoagland essays for this list (such as “The Courage of Turtles”), but I’m especially fond of “Heaven and Nature,” which shows Hoagland at his best, balancing the public and private, the well-crafted general observation with the clinching vivid example. The essay, selected by Geoffrey Wolff for The Best American Essays 1989 and collected in Heart’s Desire (1988), is an unforgettable meditation not so much on suicide as on how we remarkably manage to stay alive.

Jo Ann Beard, "The Fourth State of Matter" (originally appeared in The New Yorker , 1996)

A question for nonfiction writing students: When writing a true story based on actual events, how does the narrator create dramatic tension when most readers can be expected to know what happens in the end? To see how skillfully this can be done turn to Jo Ann Beard’s astonishing personal story about a graduate student’s murderous rampage on the University of Iowa campus in 1991. “Plasma is the fourth state of matter,” writes Beard, who worked in the U of I’s physics department at the time of the incident, “You’ve got your solid, your liquid, your gas, and there’s your plasma. In outer space there’s the plasmasphere and the plasmapause.” Besides plasma, in this emotion-packed essay you will find entangled in all the tension a lovable, dying collie, invasive squirrels, an estranged husband, the seriously disturbed gunman, and his victims, one of them among the author’s dearest friends. Selected by Ian Frazier for The Best American Essays 1997 , the essay was collected in Beard’s award-winning volume, The Boys of My Youth (1998).

David Foster Wallace, "Consider the Lobster" (originally appeared in Gourmet , 2004)

They may at first look like magazine articles—those factually-driven, expansive pieces on the Illinois State Fair, a luxury cruise ship, the adult video awards, or John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign—but once you uncover the disguise and get inside them you are in the midst of essayistic genius. One of David Foster Wallace’s shortest and most essayistic is his “coverage” of the annual Maine Lobster Festival, “Consider the Lobster.” The Festival becomes much more than an occasion to observe “the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker” in action as Wallace poses an uncomfortable question to readers of the upscale food magazine: “Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?” Don’t gloss over the footnotes. Susan Orlean selected the essay for The Best American Essays 2004 and Wallace collected it in Consider the Lobster and Other Essays (2005).

Read the essay here . (Note: the electronic version from Gourmet magazine’s archives differs from the essay that appears in The Best American Essays and in his book, Consider the Lobster. )

I wish I could include twenty more essays but these ten in themselves comprise a wonderful and wide-ranging mini-anthology, one that showcases some of the most outstanding literary voices of our time. Readers who’d like to see more of the best essays since 1950 should take a look at The Best American Essays of the Century (2000).

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Britain’s top British writers

We list the top 10 British writers who make up our great literary landscape, from William Shakespeare to Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond

TWe list the top British writers who make up our great literary landscape, from William Shakespeare to Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

The Bard is the most famous of British writers. The playwright is still commemorated for having coined nearly 1,700 of the words and phrases we still use today. He began as a playwright and as an actor in London although he is as known for his birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon where many of his plays are still performed.

Shakespeare died in 1616 leaving most of his estate to his daughter Susanna. The only mention of his wife, Anne Hathaway, in his last will and testament was to leave her his “second best bed”.

Jane Austen (1775-1817)

Paving the way for female British writers everywhere, for a woman to write, and to write about women, in her time was not the ‘done thing’. It comes as no surprise to hear that the name we know so well today, Jane Austen, published her novels anonymously.

Her books deal with the lives of the upper and middle classes in England. Sense and Sensibility came first, but all her books were a resounding success – Emma , Mansfield Park , Northanger Abbey , Persuasion. While Pride and Prejudice was famously described by Austen as her ‘darling child’ and remains a national favourite. Her house in Chawton in Hampshire is open to visit.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

From A Christmas Carol to Oliver Twist , it is difficult not to recognise one of Charles Dickens’ iconic tales. The Victorian writer is quintessential of his time.

He dealt with the struggles of contemporary life with unforgettable characters. Dickens was also a lover of theatre – both writing and performing – and performed for Queen Victoria in 1851. His birthplace museum in Portsmouth is open for visitors.

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855)

The eldest of the Brontë sisters, Charlotte outlived both her sisters and their successes. Jane Eyre , her most famous novel, created an enduring image of the wild moors of Yorkshire and introduced her criticism of society’s treatment of women. She did not actively seek to defy the roles set for women at the time. Instead she used her words in a modest feminist stand against the times.

George Eliot (1819-1880)

Hiding behind her pen name, George Eliot, Mary Ann Evans wanted to be taken seriously as a novelist at a time when women’s writing was often associated with romantic novels.

She met her partner George Henry Lewes through her literary circle in London. As he was married, their relationship was shunned by friends and family. They lived together despite the scandal. Her most famous novel, Middlemarch helped her to gain social acceptance through her psychological insights.

CS Lewis (1898-1963)

Born in Northern Ireland, Lewis studied at Oxford University. After serving as a soldier in WW1, he settled into life as a professor first at Oxford and then Cambridge university. Although renowned for his children’s fantasy tales, he also wrote profusely on religion and theology.

However, his first book in his Chronicles of Narnia series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, released in 1950, remains one of the most beloved of his published works.

George Orwell (1903-1950)

Born Eric Arthur Blair, Orwell adopted his pen name shortly before his first book in 1933 called Down and Out in Paris and London .

By the time he published his first big novel, Animal Farm in 1945, he was an established, and indeed prolific, journalist.

He had dealt with British colonies, unemployed miners, civil wars and communism in his work – all of which had a profound impact on his writing. Animal Farm shows his anti-Stalin beliefs through a political, farmyard fable. Several years later Nineteen Eighty-Four came out and secured his longevity as an author.

Ian Fleming (1908-1964)

The writer of the Bond novels created a winning framework for the world of spy literature.

However, he did not begin to create and develop the Bond character until the age of 43. After a successful career working in newspapers, as a broker and in Naval Intelligence – he settled in his house in Jamaica where Bond was born. After writing Casino Royale , the first adventure of James Bond, he continued to publish 13 more titles. They have all been played out in iconic blockbuster hits since. Diverging from the adult scene just once, he wrote the story of the flying car, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for his only son Caspar.

Roald Dahl (1916-1990)

British novelist, Roald Dahl, has straddled both the adult short story and the children’s story genre. He is certainly one of the most-loved British writers of all time.

Many believe his first book to be James and the Giant Peach , but it was in fact a picture book called The Gremlins. It was adapted from the script for the potential, but unrealised, Walt Disney film. He did not publish another children’s book until he was a father. He decided to concentrate on his short stories for adults, which he later continued alongside his prolific books. Dahl created many wonderful characters such as the BFG, the Twits and Willy Wonka in his children’s books. He also wrote in a magical ‘whizz-popping’ language that still enthrals readers.

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50 Must-Read Contemporary Essay Collections

Essay collections: Like short stories, but TRUE! When you're in the mood for fact over fiction, check out these must-read contemporary essay collections.

Liberty Hardy

Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading. Twitter: @MissLiberty

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I feel like essay collections don’t get enough credit. They’re so wonderful! They’re like short story collections, but TRUE. It’s like going to a truth buffet. You can get information about sooooo many topics, sometimes in one single book! To prove that there are a zillion amazing essay collections out there, I compiled 50 great contemporary essay collections, just from the last 18 months alone.  Ranging in topics from food, nature, politics, sex, celebrity, and more, there is something here for everyone!

I’ve included a brief description from the publisher with each title. Tell us in the comments about which of these you’ve read or other contemporary essay collections that you love. There are a LOT of them. Yay, books!

Must-Read Contemporary Essay Collections

They can’t kill us until they kill us  by hanif abdurraqib.

“In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib’s is a voice that matters. Whether he’s attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown’s grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly.”

Would Everybody Please Stop?: Reflections on Life and Other Bad Ideas  by Jenny Allen

“Jenny Allen’s musings range fluidly from the personal to the philosophical. She writes with the familiarity of someone telling a dinner party anecdote, forgoing decorum for candor and comedy. To read  Would Everybody Please Stop?  is to experience life with imaginative and incisive humor.”

Longthroat Memoirs: Soups, Sex and Nigerian Taste Buds  by Yemisi Aribisala

“A sumptuous menu of essays about Nigerian cuisine, lovingly presented by the nation’s top epicurean writer. As well as a mouth-watering appraisal of Nigerian food,  Longthroat Memoirs  is a series of love letters to the Nigerian palate. From the cultural history of soup, to fish as aphrodisiac and the sensual allure of snails,  Longthroat Memoirs  explores the complexities, the meticulousness, and the tactile joy of Nigerian gastronomy.”

Beyond Measure: Essays  by Rachel Z. Arndt

“ Beyond Measure  is a fascinating exploration of the rituals, routines, metrics and expectations through which we attempt to quantify and ascribe value to our lives. With mordant humor and penetrating intellect, Arndt casts her gaze beyond event-driven narratives to the machinery underlying them: judo competitions measured in weigh-ins and wait times; the significance of the elliptical’s stationary churn; the rote scripts of dating apps; the stupefying sameness of the daily commute.”

Magic Hours  by Tom Bissell

“Award-winning essayist Tom Bissell explores the highs and lows of the creative process. He takes us from the set of  The Big Bang Theory  to the first novel of Ernest Hemingway to the final work of David Foster Wallace; from the films of Werner Herzog to the film of Tommy Wiseau to the editorial meeting in which Paula Fox’s work was relaunched into the world. Originally published in magazines such as  The Believer ,  The New Yorker , and  Harper’s , these essays represent ten years of Bissell’s best writing on every aspect of creation—be it Iraq War documentaries or video-game character voices—and will provoke as much thought as they do laughter.”

Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession  by Alice Bolin

“In this poignant collection, Alice Bolin examines iconic American works from the essays of Joan Didion and James Baldwin to  Twin Peaks , Britney Spears, and  Serial , illuminating the widespread obsession with women who are abused, killed, and disenfranchised, and whose bodies (dead and alive) are used as props to bolster men’s stories. Smart and accessible, thoughtful and heartfelt, Bolin investigates the implications of our cultural fixations, and her own role as a consumer and creator.”

Betwixt-and-Between: Essays on the Writing Life  by Jenny Boully

“Jenny Boully’s essays are ripe with romance and sensual pleasures, drawing connections between the digression, reflection, imagination, and experience that characterizes falling in love as well as the life of a writer. Literary theory, philosophy, and linguistics rub up against memory, dreamscapes, and fancy, making the practice of writing a metaphor for the illusory nature of experience.  Betwixt and Between  is, in many ways, simply a book about how to live.”

Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give by Ada Calhoun

“In  Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give , Ada Calhoun presents an unflinching but also loving portrait of her own marriage, opening a long-overdue conversation about the institution as it truly is: not the happy ending of a love story or a relic doomed by high divorce rates, but the beginning of a challenging new chapter of which ‘the first twenty years are the hardest.'”

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays  by Alexander Chee

“ How to Write an Autobiographical Novel  is the author’s manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation’s history, including his father’s death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing—Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley—the writing of his first novel,  Edinburgh , and the election of Donald Trump.”

Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays  by Durga Chew-Bose

“ Too Much and Not the Mood is a beautiful and surprising exploration of what it means to be a first-generation, creative young woman working today. On April 11, 1931, Virginia Woolf ended her entry in A Writer’s Diary with the words ‘too much and not the mood’ to describe her frustration with placating her readers, what she described as the ‘cramming in and the cutting out.’ She wondered if she had anything at all that was truly worth saying. The attitude of that sentiment inspired Durga Chew-Bose to gather own writing in this lyrical collection of poetic essays that examine personhood and artistic growth. Drawing inspiration from a diverse group of incisive and inquiring female authors, Chew-Bose captures the inner restlessness that keeps her always on the brink of creative expression.”

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy  by Ta-Nehisi Coates

“‘We were eight years in power’ was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America’s ‘first white president.'”

Look Alive Out There: Essays by Sloane Crosley

“In  Look Alive Out There,  whether it’s scaling active volcanoes, crashing shivas, playing herself on  Gossip Girl,  befriending swingers, or squinting down the barrel of the fertility gun, Crosley continues to rise to the occasion with unmatchable nerve and electric one-liners. And as her subjects become more serious, her essays deliver not just laughs but lasting emotional heft and insight. Crosley has taken up the gauntlets thrown by her predecessors—Dorothy Parker, Nora Ephron, David Sedaris—and crafted something rare, affecting, and true.”

Fl â neuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London  by Lauren Elkin

“Part cultural meander, part memoir,  Flâneuse  takes us on a distinctly cosmopolitan jaunt that begins in New York, where Elkin grew up, and transports us to Paris via Venice, Tokyo, and London, all cities in which she’s lived. We are shown the paths beaten by such  flâneuses  as the cross-dressing nineteenth-century novelist George Sand, the Parisian artist Sophie Calle, the wartime correspondent Martha Gellhorn, and the writer Jean Rhys. With tenacity and insight, Elkin creates a mosaic of what urban settings have meant to women, charting through literature, art, history, and film the sometimes exhilarating, sometimes fraught relationship that women have with the metropolis.”

Idiophone  by Amy Fusselman

“Leaping from ballet to quiltmaking, from the The Nutcracker to an Annie-B Parson interview,  Idiophone  is a strikingly original meditation on risk-taking and provocation in art and a unabashedly honest, funny, and intimate consideration of art-making in the context of motherhood, and motherhood in the context of addiction. Amy Fusselman’s compact, beautifully digressive essay feels both surprising and effortless, fueled by broad-ranging curiosity, and, fundamentally, joy.”

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture  by Roxane Gay

“In this valuable and revealing anthology, cultural critic and bestselling author Roxane Gay collects original and previously published pieces that address what it means to live in a world where women have to measure the harassment, violence, and aggression they face, and where they are ‘routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied’ for speaking out.”

Sunshine State: Essays  by Sarah Gerard

“With the personal insight of  The Empathy Exams , the societal exposal of  Nickel and Dimed , and the stylistic innovation and intensity of her own break-out debut novel  Binary Star , Sarah Gerard’s  Sunshine State  uses the intimately personal to unearth the deep reservoirs of humanity buried in the corners of our world often hardest to face.”

The Art of the Wasted Day  by Patricia Hampl

“ The Art of the Wasted Day  is a picaresque travelogue of leisure written from a lifelong enchantment with solitude. Patricia Hampl visits the homes of historic exemplars of ease who made repose a goal, even an art form. She begins with two celebrated eighteenth-century Irish ladies who ran off to live a life of ‘retirement’ in rural Wales. Her search then leads to Moravia to consider the monk-geneticist, Gregor Mendel, and finally to Bordeaux for Michel Montaigne—the hero of this book—who retreated from court life to sit in his chateau tower and write about whatever passed through his mind, thus inventing the personal essay.”

A Really Big Lunch: The Roving Gourmand on Food and Life  by Jim Harrison

“Jim Harrison’s legendary gourmandise is on full display in  A Really Big Lunch . From the titular  New Yorker  piece about a French lunch that went to thirty-seven courses, to pieces from  Brick ,  Playboy , Kermit Lynch Newsletter, and more on the relationship between hunter and prey, or the obscure language of wine reviews,  A Really Big Lunch  is shot through with Harrison’s pointed aperçus and keen delight in the pleasures of the senses. And between the lines the pieces give glimpses of Harrison’s life over the last three decades.  A Really Big Lunch  is a literary delight that will satisfy every appetite.”

Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me  by Bill Hayes

“Bill Hayes came to New York City in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city’s incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera.”

Would You Rather?: A Memoir of Growing Up and Coming Out  by Katie Heaney

“Here, for the first time, Katie opens up about realizing at the age of twenty-eight that she is gay. In these poignant, funny essays, she wrestles with her shifting sexuality and identity, and describes what it was like coming out to everyone she knows (and everyone she doesn’t). As she revisits her past, looking for any ‘clues’ that might have predicted this outcome, Katie reveals that life doesn’t always move directly from point A to point B—no matter how much we would like it to.”

Tonight I’m Someone Else: Essays  by Chelsea Hodson

“From graffiti gangs and  Grand Theft Auto  to sugar daddies, Schopenhauer, and a deadly game of Russian roulette, in these essays, Chelsea Hodson probes her own desires to examine where the physical and the proprietary collide. She asks what our privacy, our intimacy, and our own bodies are worth in the increasingly digital world of liking, linking, and sharing.”

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.: Essays  by Samantha Irby

“With  We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. , ‘bitches gotta eat’ blogger and comedian Samantha Irby turns the serio-comic essay into an art form. Whether talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making ‘adult’ budgets, explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette—she’s ’35-ish, but could easily pass for 60-something’—detailing a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father’s ashes, sharing awkward sexual encounters, or dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms—hang in there for the Costco loot—she’s as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths.”

This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America  by Morgan Jerkins

“Doubly disenfranchised by race and gender, often deprived of a place within the mostly white mainstream feminist movement, black women are objectified, silenced, and marginalized with devastating consequences, in ways both obvious and subtle, that are rarely acknowledged in our country’s larger discussion about inequality. In  This Will Be My Undoing , Jerkins becomes both narrator and subject to expose the social, cultural, and historical story of black female oppression that influences the black community as well as the white, male-dominated world at large.”

Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays  by Fenton Johnson

“Part retrospective, part memoir, Fenton Johnson’s collection  Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays  explores sexuality, religion, geography, the AIDS crisis, and more. Johnson’s wanderings take him from the hills of Kentucky to those of San Francisco, from the streets of Paris to the sidewalks of Calcutta. Along the way, he investigates questions large and small: What’s the relationship between artists and museums, illuminated in a New Guinean display of shrunken heads? What’s the difference between empiricism and intuition?”

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter: Essays  by Scaachi Koul

“In  One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter , Scaachi Koul deploys her razor-sharp humor to share all the fears, outrages, and mortifying moments of her life. She learned from an early age what made her miserable, and for Scaachi anything can be cause for despair. Whether it’s a shopping trip gone awry; enduring awkward conversations with her bikini waxer; overcoming her fear of flying while vacationing halfway around the world; dealing with Internet trolls, or navigating the fears and anxieties of her parents. Alongside these personal stories are pointed observations about life as a woman of color: where every aspect of her appearance is open for critique, derision, or outright scorn; where strict gender rules bind in both Western and Indian cultures, leaving little room for a woman not solely focused on marriage and children to have a career (and a life) for herself.”

Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions  by Valeria Luiselli and jon lee anderson (translator)

“A damning confrontation between the American dream and the reality of undocumented children seeking a new life in the U.S. Structured around the 40 questions Luiselli translates and asks undocumented Latin American children facing deportation,  Tell Me How It Ends  (an expansion of her 2016 Freeman’s essay of the same name) humanizes these young migrants and highlights the contradiction between the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants and the reality of racism and fear—both here and back home.”

All the Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers  by Alana Massey

“Mixing Didion’s affected cool with moments of giddy celebrity worship, Massey examines the lives of the women who reflect our greatest aspirations and darkest fears back onto us. These essays are personal without being confessional and clever in a way that invites readers into the joke. A cultural critique and a finely wrought fan letter, interwoven with stories that are achingly personal, All the Lives I Want is also an exploration of mental illness, the sex industry, and the dangers of loving too hard.”

Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish: Essays  by Tom McCarthy

“Certain points of reference recur with dreamlike insistence—among them the artist Ed Ruscha’s  Royal Road Test , a photographic documentation of the roadside debris of a Royal typewriter hurled from the window of a traveling car; the great blooms of jellyfish that are filling the oceans and gumming up the machinery of commerce and military domination—and the question throughout is: How can art explode the restraining conventions of so-called realism, whether aesthetic or political, to engage in the active reinvention of the world?”

Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump’s America  by Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding

“When 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump and 94 percent of black women voted for Hillary Clinton, how can women unite in Trump’s America? Nasty Women includes inspiring essays from a diverse group of talented women writers who seek to provide a broad look at how we got here and what we need to do to move forward.”

Don’t Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex, and Life  by Peggy Orenstein

“Named one of the ’40 women who changed the media business in the last 40 years’ by  Columbia Journalism Review , Peggy Orenstein is one of the most prominent, unflinching feminist voices of our time. Her writing has broken ground and broken silences on topics as wide-ranging as miscarriage, motherhood, breast cancer, princess culture and the importance of girls’ sexual pleasure. Her unique blend of investigative reporting, personal revelation and unexpected humor has made her books bestselling classics.”

When You Find Out the World Is Against You: And Other Funny Memories About Awful Moments  by Kelly Oxford

“Kelly Oxford likes to blow up the internet. Whether it is with the kind of Tweets that lead  Rolling Stone  to name her one of the Funniest People on Twitter or with pictures of her hilariously adorable family (human and animal) or with something much more serious, like creating the hashtag #NotOkay, where millions of women came together to share their stories of sexual assault, Kelly has a unique, razor-sharp perspective on modern life. As a screen writer, professional sh*t disturber, wife and mother of three, Kelly is about everything but the status quo.”

Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman  by Anne Helen Petersen

“You know the type: the woman who won’t shut up, who’s too brazen, too opinionated—too much. She’s the unruly woman, and she embodies one of the most provocative and powerful forms of womanhood today. In  Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud , Anne Helen Petersen uses the lens of ‘unruliness’ to explore the ascension of pop culture powerhouses like Lena Dunham, Nicki Minaj, and Kim Kardashian, exploring why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures. With its brisk, incisive analysis,  Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud  will be a conversation-starting book on what makes and breaks celebrity today.”

Well, That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist  by Franchesca Ramsey

“In her first book, Ramsey uses her own experiences as an accidental activist to explore the many ways we communicate with each other—from the highs of bridging gaps and making connections to the many pitfalls that accompany talking about race, power, sexuality, and gender in an unpredictable public space…the internet.”

Shrewed: A Wry and Closely Observed Look at the Lives of Women and Girls  by Elizabeth Renzetti

“Drawing upon Renzetti’s decades of reporting on feminist issues,  Shrewed  is a book about feminism’s crossroads. From Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign to the quest for equal pay, from the lessons we can learn from old ladies to the future of feminism in a turbulent world, Renzetti takes a pointed, witty look at how far we’ve come—and how far we have to go.”

What Are We Doing Here?: Essays  by Marilynne Robinson

“In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and Tocqueville inform our political consciousness or discussing the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson’s peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display.”

Double Bind: Women on Ambition  by Robin Romm

“‘A work of courage and ferocious honesty’ (Diana Abu-Jaber),  Double Bind  could not come at a more urgent time. Even as major figures from Gloria Steinem to Beyoncé embrace the word ‘feminism,’ the word ‘ambition’ remains loaded with ambivalence. Many women see it as synonymous with strident or aggressive, yet most feel compelled to strive and achieve—the seeming contradiction leaving them in a perpetual double bind. Ayana Mathis, Molly Ringwald, Roxane Gay, and a constellation of ‘nimble thinkers . . . dismantle this maddening paradox’ ( O, The Oprah Magazine ) with candor, wit, and rage. Women who have made landmark achievements in fields as diverse as law, dog sledding, and butchery weigh in, breaking the last feminist taboo once and for all.”

The Destiny Thief: Essays on Writing, Writers and Life  by Richard Russo

“In these nine essays, Richard Russo provides insight into his life as a writer, teacher, friend, and reader. From a commencement speech he gave at Colby College, to the story of how an oddly placed toilet made him reevaluate the purpose of humor in art and life, to a comprehensive analysis of Mark Twain’s value, to his harrowing journey accompanying a dear friend as she pursued gender-reassignment surgery,  The Destiny Thief  reflects the broad interests and experiences of one of America’s most beloved authors. Warm, funny, wise, and poignant, the essays included here traverse Russo’s writing life, expanding our understanding of who he is and how his singular, incredibly generous mind works. An utter joy to read, they give deep insight into the creative process from the prospective of one of our greatest writers.”

Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race by Naben Ruthnum

“Curry is a dish that doesn’t quite exist, but, as this wildly funny and sharp essay points out, a dish that doesn’t properly exist can have infinite, equally authentic variations. By grappling with novels, recipes, travelogues, pop culture, and his own upbringing, Naben Ruthnum depicts how the distinctive taste of curry has often become maladroit shorthand for brown identity. With the sardonic wit of Gita Mehta’s  Karma Cola  and the refined, obsessive palette of Bill Buford’s  Heat , Ruthnum sinks his teeth into the story of how the beloved flavor calcified into an aesthetic genre that limits the imaginations of writers, readers, and eaters.”

The River of Consciousness  by Oliver Sacks

“Sacks, an Oxford-educated polymath, had a deep familiarity not only with literature and medicine but with botany, animal anatomy, chemistry, the history of science, philosophy, and psychology.  The River of Consciousness  is one of two books Sacks was working on up to his death, and it reveals his ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge, and his unceasing, timeless project to understand what makes us human.”

All the Women in My Family Sing: Women Write the World: Essays on Equality, Justice, and Freedom (Nothing But the Truth So Help Me God)  by Deborah Santana and America Ferrera

“ All the Women in My Family Sing  is an anthology documenting the experiences of women of color at the dawn of the twenty-first century. It is a vital collection of prose and poetry whose topics range from the pressures of being the vice-president of a Fortune 500 Company, to escaping the killing fields of Cambodia, to the struggles inside immigration, identity, romance, and self-worth. These brief, trenchant essays capture the aspirations and wisdom of women of color as they exercise autonomy, creativity, and dignity and build bridges to heal the brokenness in today’s turbulent world.”

We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America  by Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page

“For some, ‘passing’ means opportunity, access, or safety. Others don’t willingly pass but are ‘passed’ in specific situations by someone else.  We Wear the Mask , edited by  Brando Skyhorse  and  Lisa Page , is an illuminating and timely anthology that examines the complex reality of passing in America. Skyhorse, a Mexican American, writes about how his mother passed him as an American Indian before he learned who he really is. Page shares how her white mother didn’t tell friends about her black ex-husband or that her children were, in fact, biracial.”

Feel Free: Essays by Zadie Smith

“Since she burst spectacularly into view with her debut novel almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith has established herself not just as one of the world’s preeminent fiction writers, but also a brilliant and singular essayist. She contributes regularly to  The New Yorker  and the  New York Review of Books  on a range of subjects, and each piece of hers is a literary event in its own right.”

The Mother of All Questions: Further Reports from the Feminist Revolutions  by Rebecca Solnit

“In a timely follow-up to her national bestseller  Men Explain Things to Me , Rebecca Solnit offers indispensable commentary on women who refuse to be silenced, misogynistic violence, the fragile masculinity of the literary canon, the gender binary, the recent history of rape jokes, and much more. In characteristic style, Solnit mixes humor, keen analysis, and powerful insight in these essays.”

The Wrong Way to Save Your Life: Essays  by Megan Stielstra

“Whether she’s imagining the implications of open-carry laws on college campuses, recounting the story of going underwater on the mortgage of her first home, or revealing the unexpected pains and joys of marriage and motherhood, Stielstra’s work informs, impels, enlightens, and embraces us all. The result is something beautiful—this story, her courage, and, potentially, our own.”

Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions & Criticisms  by Michelle Tea

“Delivered with her signature honesty and dark humor, this is Tea’s first-ever collection of journalistic writing. As she blurs the line between telling other people’s stories and her own, she turns an investigative eye to the genre that’s nurtured her entire career—memoir—and considers the price that art demands be paid from life.”

A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause  by Shawn Wen

“In precise, jewel-like scenes and vignettes,  A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause  pays homage to the singular genius of a mostly-forgotten art form. Drawing on interviews, archival research, and meticulously observed performances, Wen translates the gestural language of mime into a lyric written portrait by turns whimsical, melancholic, and haunting.”

Acid West: Essays  by Joshua Wheeler

“The radical evolution of American identity, from cowboys to drone warriors to space explorers, is a story rooted in southern New Mexico.  Acid West  illuminates this history, clawing at the bounds of genre to reveal a place that is, for better or worse, home. By turns intimate, absurd, and frightening,  Acid West  is an enlightening deep-dive into a prophetic desert at the bottom of America.”

Sexographies  by Gabriela Wiener and Lucy Greaves And jennifer adcock (Translators)

“In fierce and sumptuous first-person accounts, renowned Peruvian journalist Gabriela Wiener records infiltrating the most dangerous Peruvian prison, participating in sexual exchanges in swingers clubs, traveling the dark paths of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris in the company of transvestites and prostitutes, undergoing a complicated process of egg donation, and participating in a ritual of ayahuasca ingestion in the Amazon jungle—all while taking us on inward journeys that explore immigration, maternity, fear of death, ugliness, and threesomes. Fortunately, our eagle-eyed voyeur emerges from her narrative forays unscathed and ready to take on the kinks, obsessions, and messiness of our lives.  Sexographies  is an eye-opening, kamikaze journey across the contours of the human body and mind.”

The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative  by Florence Williams

“From forest trails in Korea, to islands in Finland, to eucalyptus groves in California, Florence Williams investigates the science behind nature’s positive effects on the brain. Delving into brand-new research, she uncovers the powers of the natural world to improve health, promote reflection and innovation, and strengthen our relationships. As our modern lives shift dramatically indoors, these ideas—and the answers they yield—are more urgent than ever.”

Can You Tolerate This?: Essays  by Ashleigh Young

“ Can You Tolerate This?  presents a vivid self-portrait of an introspective yet widely curious young woman, the colorful, isolated community in which she comes of age, and the uneasy tensions—between safety and risk, love and solitude, the catharsis of grief and the ecstasy of creation—that define our lives.”

What are your favorite contemporary essay collections?

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