# Essayism > Essays on society and the shape of life ## Posts - [William Hazlitt, over coffee and cheap biscuits](https://essayism.org/william-hazlitt-over-coffee-and-cheap-biscuits/): A recollection in the essayistic disposition I was thinking about William Hazlitt the other morning. There was coffee. There were cheap biscuits. I don’t remember what prompted him. That’s how writers usually return to us; not through ceremony, but because something has caught on something else. Hazlitt understood that. And, apparently, I’ve been carrying him around for rather longer than I realised. It began, I think, with Shooters Hill. Hazlitt’s remembered ascent; the long straight pull up the Dover Road, London falling away behind, Kent opening ahead, is one of those passages where a life becomes a landscape. I didn’t know […] - [Charles Lamb and the Intimate Essay](https://essayism.org/charles-lamb-and-the-intimate-essay/): When readers first encounter Charles Lamb (1775-1834), they often discover an essayist who seems instantly familiar. Unlike Francis Bacon, who writes with aphoristic authority, or Addison and Steele, who observe society from a semi-public platform, Lamb invites us into a more personal world. His essays are populated by memories, friendships, books, streets, habits and small incidents of everyday life. We do not merely read his thoughts. We accompany him in them. I think this disposition earns Lamb an important place in the history of essayism. Yet his significance lies not simply in being personal. Many writers are personal. but Lamb transforms […] - [Addison and Steele: When the Essay Entered Society](https://essayism.org/addison-and-steele-when-the-essay-entered-society/): What happens when essaying ceases to be a private act and becomes a public conversation? The question marks a turning point in the history of essaying. With Michel de Montaigne, the essay begins in solitude. A man retreats to his library and turns examination inward. The self becomes both subject and instrument. The essay is not a declaration but an experiment in thought. Through the observation of his own experience, Montaigne discovered a method of inquiry that remains recognisable today. Francis Bacon carried the essay in a different direction. His attention moved outward. Rather than exploring the movements of his own […] - [Francis Bacon and the Essay of Observation](https://essayism.org/francis-bacon-and-the-essay-of-observation/): If Michel de Montaigne established the essay as a form of inquiry, Francis Bacon transformed it into a form of observation. The two men were near contemporaries. Montaigne’s Essais first appeared in 1580. Bacon’s first collection of essays was published in 1597, less than two decades later. Yet despite their proximity in time, they approached the emerging form in strikingly different ways. Montaigne explored. Bacon examined. Montaigne followed questions wherever they led. Bacon sought to distil experience into insight. Together, they established two traditions that continue to shape essay writing today. A New Age of Knowledge Francis Bacon (1561-1626) lived at […] - [Michel de Montaigne and the Birth of Essayism](https://essayism.org/michel-de-montaigne-and-the-birth-of-essayism/): Essayism begins with Michel de Montaigne. When the French writer published the first two volumes of Essais in 1580, he was not establishing a literary genre in the modern sense. He was attempting something more personal and, ultimately, more revolutionary. The title itself came from the French word essai, meaning an attempt or trial. Montaigne was not presenting completed arguments or settled conclusions. He was making attempts to understand. The significance of this approach can easily be overlooked. Sixteenth-century Europe was a world shaped by religious conflict, political instability, and competing claims to authority. The certainties of medieval thought were being […] ## Pages - [Essayism.org | Manifesto](https://essayism.org/essayism-org-manifesto/): In development 30th September 2026 Modern digital culture and contemporary scholarship have sanitized the essay. They treat it like a treasured artifact; a pristine, melancholic arrangement of beautiful sentences pinned safely behind glass. They look at the form as a boutique commodity, a vehicle for polished aesthetic display. We reject this museum. Essayism is not an ornament; it is a defensive weapon of intellectual survival. When Michel de Montaigne created his Essais in the 16th century, he was navigating the blood, ash, and fanatical certainties of the French Wars of Religion. As the Mayor of Bordeaux, operating at the sharp end […] - [Essayism | About](https://essayism.org/essayism-about/): In development 30 September 2026 - [Essayism | Letters From An Essayist](https://essayism.org/letters-from-an-essayist/): This is your opportunity to join in a conversation about Essayism. You don’t need any special qualification other than the ability to read and write in English. Really, that’s all. You don’t have to be an essayist. You might simply be interested in essayism. Essayism is a craft. It is something we can practise, explore and share. It is, in the best sense, totally do-able. These conversations are about the craft. Pose a thought. Ask a question. Stretch your imagination. Look at something from another angle. This is where I stand. This is what I can see from here. Come and […] - [Essayism | Provenance](https://essayism.org/essayism-provenance/): I wrote my first published essay in September 1965. It explored a tension between a local county council’s education policy and the needs of my community. I knew even then that writing was something I was bound to do. At fourteen I attended night school to learn typing. I took my sister’s portable typewriter on what became a ten-year loan, and I bought a large leather-bound journal in which I intended to write. Yet a curious thing happened. I never wrote in it. Instead, that journal accumulated loose sheets of foolscap paper covered with thoughts, explorations and provisional ideas that never […] - [Essayism | Essayistic](https://essayism.org/essayistic/): Reading List The works listed here are not presented as “the best essays”, nor as representatives of a particular school or definition of the form. They have been selected because they exhibit characteristics commonly associated with essayistic writing: curiosity, inquiry, reflection, exploration, and a willingness to follow a question where it leads. Some align closely with my own understanding of essayism; others do not. Their inclusion should not be taken as endorsement or agreement. What interests me is not whether a work fits neatly within a category, but whether it demonstrates an essayistic engagement with experience, ideas, relationships, or the world. […] - [Essayism | Essayists](https://essayism.org/essayists/) - [Essayism | Elsewhwere](https://essayism.org/influence/): Where essayism appears, not in an essay, but elsewhere. The essay is not confined to the essay. At its heart, essayism is a disposition: a willingness to attend carefully, to remain open to uncertainty, and to allow understanding to emerge through inquiry. That disposition can take many forms. Sometimes it appears in essays. Sometimes it appears in criticism, research, policy, or fiction. The projects below extend my essayism into other domains; while I search to populate the Essayistic page with contributions from other writers The Marshall Review Reviews, reflections, and critical responses to books, ideas, and publications. The essayist approaches reading […] - [Essayism | How I practice it](https://essayism.org/practice/): I cannot tell you how to write an essay. The essay has never been a fixed form, and Essayism is wider still. It includes habits of attention, ways of asking questions, and approaches to understanding that often resist prescription. The contributions of the essayists mentioned in the first two Essayist posts demonstrate the breadth of the approach. What I can do is discuss my own practice. The apple and gravity Essayism is, for me, a disposition. By this, I mean a way of being, shaped by a number of characteristics. It seems to be a combination of personality, faculty, and acquired […] - [Essayism | What it is](https://essayism.org/what-it-is/): I’ve wandered this mountainside for a good while now. What follows is not a conclusion but a brief account of the terrain encountered along the way. These notes are not the essay, but they are my briefing to myself about the essay this subject deserves. A landmark or two on the path towards it. It gives me my opening line: what if the essay was never merely a text? When people first encounter the word essayism, they sometimes assume it describes a literary movement, a theory of writing, or perhaps a particular style of essay. I understand the assumption. The term […] - [Essayism | fly-page](https://essayism.org/): Essayism Reflective writing and structural tensions. The essay was never just a text… Start Reading [comment]: # (Generated by Hostinger Tools Plugin)