The essay is the form of thinking out loud — Montaigne invented it by asking, of every subject, "What do I know?" Here are the masters of the most personal, most companionable kind of prose.
The most intelligent company in print
The essay is a young form with an old soul. Montaigne invented it in the 1570s, retreating to his tower to write his way toward self-knowledge under a motto that was really a question: Que sais-je? — What do I know? The answer, he found, was best discovered on the page, in prose that wandered, doubled back, and told the truth about its own uncertainty.
Everything since has been in dialogue with him. Bacon made the essay aphoristic and worldly; Lamb made it warm and digressive; Hazlitt made it fierce; Emerson made it prophetic; Stevenson and Chesterton made it sparkle. The familiar essay is the most companionable thing in literature — a voice in your ear, thinking through a problem with you, in no hurry to arrive.
This collection gathers the great essayists of the public domain. Read them not for information but for company: the pleasure of a first-rate mind turning something over, finding the unexpected angle, and saying it better than you could have. The essay is proof that the best subject for prose is often just one person, honestly thinking.