An essay has come to mean a prose composition (usually) which can range in length from a few hundred words to hundreds of pages.  Essays address, either formally or informally, a contemporary topic.  In general, the essay is the most flexible of all the literary forms.

Essays are generally classified as:

• argumentative essays
• descriptive essays
• expository essays
• narrative essays

Formal essays are generally written in  a solemn tone from a third person voice.  They are attempts to be impersonal and analytical analyses of a topic.  Informal essays tend to be first person, more conversational and much more personally involved with the topic being addressed.

Today, most essayists are featured as columnists in prominent magazines, newspapers, and even the internet.  IN fact, the Internet's capacity for archiving texts has made the Essay even more available to today's readers.

In the pages that follow are sample essays which demonstrate the broad range of this literary form.  

Following the four essays is a writing assignment which will ask you to write about these works.

Among the early essayists, Plato's analogy of the cave, and Bacon's Essays prime examples of the style from 300 BC to the late 16th century.

  Essay writers explore a wide variety of topics.  Individuals such as Virginia Woolf and Joan Didion explore feminist issues.  Susan Sontag used the essay form to question the way we see and characterize illness in Illness as Metaphor and AIDS as Metaphor.  

In addition to being a powerful example of an essay written in verse; Alexander Pope's Moral Essays serve as prime examples of the essay's use as a tool for reform or protest.  Other writers who are known for this are Nat Hentoff , George Orwell, and Martin Luther King Jr.