100 Great Essays by Robert DiYanni

Essaie/Essayer

french for attempts, works of Michel de Montaigne

E.B White

twentieth-century; american; modern master of genre, best known for his fiction

Frederick Douglass

writes about his struggle for literacy as a black slave

M Scott Momaday

writes about nature in his work "The way to Rainey Mountain"

Maxine Hong Kingston

writes about the power and place of gender in traditional China by telling a story of a man, Tang Ao, who visits a land of women, gets captured and transforms into a woman

Joan Didion

writes about the social world in his writing about "Las Vegas Weddings", "Marrying Absurd"

Gretel Ehrlich

writes about what it means to be a cowboy who cares for animals as an integral part of his life, and of how cowboys if they are to be good at what they do, need as much maternalism as machismo

Richard Rodriquez

wrote about the following subjects: Terriosm, being raised bilingual, San Fransico

Kenko

(1283-1350) a poet and Buddhist monk, whose brief, fragmentary essays echo the quick brushstrokes of Zen painting

Jonathan Swift

(1667-1745) best known for his satire, "Gulliver's Travels", also wrote a number of essays including "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of the Poor People in Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents or Country, and for making them beneficial to their Publick"

Samuel Johnson

(1709-1784) eighteenth-century; whose philosophical and moral periodical essays appeared regularly in his own "Rambler", "Idler", and "Adventure"; has a gravity and sobriety tone to his writing

Charles Lamb

(1775-1834) nineteenth century; most notable practitioner; whose "Essays of Elia" and "More Essays of Elia" are constructed to read less like random assortments than as books centered on characters and whose stories from a loose plot

William Hazlitt

(1778-1830) nineteenth century; has passionate and highly opinionated essays who complemented the playful essays of Charles Lamb; a friend of the English Romantic poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

George Orwell

(1903-1950); best known for his satirical "Animal Farm" and "1984", is equally eminent for the four thick volumes of essays and letters he produced

Zora Neale Hurtson

African american author; works include: "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and "Harlem Renaissance

Henry David Thoreau

Friend and protege of Emerson; New Englander who limned the natural world in prose; wrote essay on a variety of topics but mostly nature; most famous essay is political,"On the Duty of Civil Disobedience"

Plutarch

Greek writer; who wrote ''Paralles Lives''; influenced the art of biography; also wrote essays in his ''Moralia''

Seneca

Roman writer; philosopher, dramatist, and orator; wrote essays in the form of classical oratory; on topics such as ''Asthma'' and ''Noise''

Sei Shonagon

a court lady who lived and wrote in the tenth century

Aphorism

a short witty phrase -"if you lie down with dogs you're going to get fleas"-

Martin Luther King

cited quotes from Thoreau's " Civil Disobedience" which helped him make a peaceful non-violent political resistance; writer about racial prejudice and injustice, and what must be done to establish and ensure racial equality, and why

Joseph Addison

eighteenth century; (1672-1729) essays in the "Tatler" and "Spectator" periodicals were jointly wrote with Richard Steele

Richard Steele

eighteenth-century; (1672-1729) essays in the "Tatler" and "Spectator" periodicals were jointly wrote and published with Joseph Addison

Benjamin Franklin

eighteenth-century; american; compiled his "Autobiography" and his "Poor Richard's Almanack"

Thomas Paine

eighteenth-century; american; wrote essays of political persuasion in the periodical "The Crisis"

Virginia Woolf

english writer, novelist; (1882-1941) wrote essay volumes; presents her views on a wide range of authors and works of literature in a relaxed, casual style

James Thurber

essayist who writes about the social world; "University Days" which is about college

Frances Bacon

from England; sixteenth century writer; statesman, philosopher, scientist, and essayist; remained politically active and intellectually prominent till death; life and work exhibited a interplay between ancient and modern forms of thought; coupled with a modernity that valued experiment and individual experience was a respect for the authority of tradition

Montaigne

from France; father of the essay; called his works "essais"; subjects wrote about were: vice customs, behavior, children, and cannibals; his essays reveal his mind in the act of thinking; first essays were reflection about his reading and made liberal use of quoted passages while his later ones relied much less on external sources for impetus and inspiration; sixteenth century writer

Ralph Waldo Emerson

nineteenth-century; american essayist; essays grew out of his public lectures; wrote essays in a highly aphoristic style that contained nuggets of wisdom served up in striking images and memorably pithy expressions; he focused on nature, which he envisioned as a divine moral guide to life

James Baldwin

rarely wrote about social issues per se; (1924-1987) wrote almost exclusively about race, particularly about race relation in america and about his place in society as a black man and a writer, theme was identity