Essayists on the Essay ─ Montaigne to Our Time

From a buoyant introduction that provides a sweeping historical and analytic overview of essayists’ thinking about their genre—a collective poetics of the essay—to the detailed headnotes offering pointed information about both the essayists themselves and the anthologized selections, to the richly detailed bibliographic sections, Essayists on the Essay is essential to anyone who cares about the form.

This collection provides teachers, scholars, essayists, and readers with the materials they need to take a fresh look at this important but often overlooked form that has for too long been relegated to the role of service genre—used primarily to write about other more “literary” genres or to teach young people how to write. Here, in a single celebratory volume, are four centuries of commentary and theory reminding us of the essay’s storied history, its international appeal, and its relationship not just with poetry and fiction but also with radio, film, video, and new media.

Carl H. Klaus, founding?director of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program, is professor emeritus at the University of Iowa and coeditor (with Patricia Hampl) of Sightline Books: The Iowa Series in Literary Nonfiction. His widely praised nonfiction includes most recently The Made-Up Self: Impersonation in the Personal Essay (Iowa, 2010), as well as My Vegetable Love (Iowa paperback 2000), its companion Weathering Winter (Iowa, 1997), Taking Retirement: A Beginner’s Diary and Letters to Kate: Life after Life (Iowa, 2006). Ned Stuckey-French is an assistant professor in the Department of English at Florida State University. He is the author of The American Essay in the American Century, a study of personal essays, magazine culture and class construction. His reviews and critical work have appeared in journals such as American Literature, the CEA Critic, Modern Fiction Studies, middlebrow, culturefront, and the Iowa Review. He is the book review editor for Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction.

?