An essayist is an author who writes compositions which can be about any particular subject. The essay is (usually) shorter and (mostly) more tentative than a formal finished monograph or treatise.

The essay was a favourite form of the man of letters, allowing a display of understated reading and culture. In recent years it has also been used with greater acuity, and more definite political intent.

A representative list of famous essayists:

• Matthew Arnold
• Francis Bacon
• Hilaire Belloc
• William Cobbett
• Thomas de Quincey
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• William Hazlitt
• Hugh Hood
• Leigh Hunt
• Samuel Johnson
• Charles Lamb
• Michel de Montaigne
• Joyce Carol Oates
• Katherine Ann Porter
• Bertrand Russell
• John Ralston Saul
• Susan Sontag
• Lytton Strachey
• Voltaire
• Rebecca West
• E. B. White
• Virginia Woolf

See also

• List of essayists
• Lists of authors