Reading List
The Best Essayists to Read
On his thirty-eighth birthday, a French magistrate has a Latin inscription put up in his library, announcing that he has retired from public life to his books, and begins to write about himself. In 1928 Virginia Woolf tells the students of two Cambridge women’s colleges that a woman needs money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. In 1943 James Baldwin buries his father on his own nineteenth birthday, while Harlem is still smouldering from a riot. The essay is the form in which writers think out loud, and these twelve did it best, from Montaigne’s tower to Zadie Smith’s London, each with the single book to start with.
By Lisanne Swart · 12 books · Classic & modern essays · Updated October 2026
Quick answer
Start with Joan Didion or James Baldwin if you want the modern essay at its sharpest, or with Montaigne if you want to see where it all began. The twelve essayists below run from the sixteenth century to today, from personal essays about grief and illness to essays about politics, art and nature. For each one there is a short introduction and the book to read first.
The list at a glance
- 01Michel de Montaigne Michel de Montaigne
- 02Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson
- 03Virginia Woolf Virginia Woolf
- 04George Orwell George Orwell
- 05James Baldwin James Baldwin
- 06Joan Didion Joan Didion
- 07Susan Sontag Susan Sontag
- 08Annie Dillard Annie Dillard
- 09Audre Lorde Audre Lorde
- 10Nora Ephron Nora Ephron
- 11Rebecca Solnit Rebecca Solnit
- 12Zadie Smith Zadie Smith
Twelve great essayists, and where to start
Michel de Montaigne
A French nobleman and magistrate who withdrew to the library in his tower in 1571 and spent the rest of his life writing about whatever he was thinking: friendship, cruelty, fear, his kidney stones, death. The first edition of his Essais appeared in 1580, and gave the form its name.
Where to startStart with The Complete Essays, in M. A. Screech’s translation for Penguin, and dip in rather than reading in order. For readers who want the man who invented writing honestly about yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A former Unitarian minister from Massachusetts who became the leading voice of American Transcendentalism. His Essays: First Series (1841) includes “Self-Reliance”, still one of the most quoted essays in English.
Where to startStart with “Self-Reliance”, in Essays: First Series (1841). For readers who want to be told to trust themselves.
Virginia Woolf
The novelist of Mrs Dalloway was also one of the great essayists, writing reviews, portraits and arguments for more than thirty years. Her most famous essay began as two lectures at Newnham and Girton, the women’s colleges at Cambridge, in 1928.
Where to startStart with A Room of One’s Own (1929). For anyone who has wondered why there were so few women writers in the past.
George Orwell
Before Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell served as a colonial policeman in Burma and lived among the poor in Paris and London. His essays, from “Shooting an Elephant” to “Politics and the English Language”, are models of plain, honest prose.
Where to startStart with a collection of his essays that includes “Shooting an Elephant” and “Politics and the English Language”. For readers who care about clear thinking and clear writing.
James Baldwin
Born in Harlem, Baldwin left for Paris at twenty-four and wrote some of the most powerful essays of the twentieth century about race, religion, family and America. In the title essay of his first collection, his father’s funeral falls on the day of the Harlem riot of 1943.
Where to startStart with Notes of a Native Son (1955), then read The Fire Next Time (1963). For readers who want to understand anger, and what can be done with it.
Joan Didion
A Californian who wrote about the 1960s counterculture, Hollywood and her own migraines with the same cool precision. Late in life she wrote about the sudden death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, in a book that won the National Book Award.
Where to startStart with Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968). If you are grieving, read The Year of Magical Thinking (2005). For readers who like their sentences sharp and their feelings held in check.
Susan Sontag
A critic and novelist who wrote about camp, photography, pornography and war. After being treated for breast cancer, she wrote Illness as Metaphor (1978), an argument against the myths and blame we attach to disease.
Where to startStart with Against Interpretation (1966), which includes “Notes on ‘Camp’”. If illness touches your life, start with Illness as Metaphor. For readers who enjoy being made to think hard.
Annie Dillard
Dillard spent a year watching a creek near her home in Virginia and turned it into a book that won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Her essays look at nature, faith and attention with an almost unbearable intensity.
Where to startStart with Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), then her essay “Total Eclipse” in Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982). For readers who want to learn to look.
Audre Lorde
A poet, teacher and activist who wrote as a Black lesbian feminist and a mother, and who wrote openly about her breast cancer. Her talks and essays about silence, anger and difference are still quoted in almost every argument about feminism.
Where to startStart with Sister Outsider (1984), especially “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”. For readers who have kept quiet too long.
Nora Ephron
A New York Post reporter and Esquire columnist who went on to write When Harry Met Sally. Her late essays about ageing, food, divorce and her own neck are among the funniest in the language.
Where to startStart with I Feel Bad About My Neck (2006). For readers who want to laugh about getting older.
Rebecca Solnit
A San Francisco writer of more than twenty books about walking, getting lost, hope, landscape and power. Her 2008 essay “Men Explain Things to Me” helped inspire the word “mansplaining”, although she did not coin it.
Where to startStart with A Field Guide to Getting Lost (2005), or Men Explain Things to Me (2014) if you want her on women and power. For readers who like essays that wander and still arrive somewhere.
Zadie Smith
The author of White Teeth is also one of the best essayists writing today, on books, films, Facebook, joy, her father and her corner of north-west London.
Where to startStart with Feel Free (2018). For readers who want a generous, curious mind to keep them company.
Not sure where to start?
If you want the essay at its sharpest
→ Read Joan Didion or James Baldwin.
If you want to see where the essay began
→ Start with Michel de Montaigne.
If you want women writing about their lives and bodies
→ Read Audre Lorde, Susan Sontag or Nora Ephron.
If you want something contemporary
→ Read Zadie Smith or Rebecca Solnit.
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Frequently asked questions about essayists
Who is the greatest essayist of all time?
Michel de Montaigne is usually named first, because his Essais (1580) created the form. In English, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, James Baldwin and Joan Didion are the names that come up most often.
Who invented the essay?
Michel de Montaigne, whose Essais were first published in 1580. The French word essai means an attempt or a trial.
Which essay collection should I read first?
Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem or James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son. Both are short, and both show what a personal essay can do.
Who are the best women essayists?
On this list: Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion, Susan Sontag, Annie Dillard, Audre Lorde, Nora Ephron, Rebecca Solnit and Zadie Smith.
Who are the best contemporary essayists?
Of the living writers on this list, Zadie Smith, Rebecca Solnit and Annie Dillard are the place to start.
Footnotes
- James Baldwin, “Notes of a Native Son” (1955): his father’s funeral took place on Baldwin’s nineteenth birthday, the day of the Harlem riot of August 1943.
- Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1975; Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2005.
- The quotation is from Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”, in Essays: First Series (1841), as published by Project Gutenberg.
From the bookshelf
“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
More books I keep coming back to are on my personal bookshelf, and every month one of them goes out to the Night Owl Bookclub.
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I update this list as I read. New picks go to my monthly newsletter first.
