Some of the most famous literary works are essays, written by great authors and writers. Essays span a variety of genres, including comedy, non-fiction, history, and current events. Some essays are published as a stand-alone piece in a magazine, while others are grouped into collections. Who are the best essayists of all time?
The essayists on this list come from a variety of backgrounds and time periods in history. Some are still currently writing. It’s no wonder that essays remain a popular literary format as authors can make a point more directly while still following a specific format, allowing the writer to get their point across, or tell their story more quickly.
This list features the best essayists in history, ranked as the best by voters, and including, Virginia Woolf, Geoff Dyer, Ellen Willis, Christopher Hitchens, Nora Ephron, and Zadie Smith. Vote up the best essayists below to see how the essayists you think are great rank!
The essayists on this list come from a variety of backgrounds and time periods in history. Some are still currently writing. It’s no wonder that essays remain a popular literary format as authors can make a point more directly while still following a specific format, allowing the writer to get their point across, or tell their story more quickly.
This list features the best essayists in history, ranked as the best by voters, and including, Virginia Woolf, Geoff Dyer, Ellen Willis, Christopher Hitchens, Nora Ephron, and Zadie Smith. Vote up the best essayists below to see how the essayists you think are great rank!
Most divisive: George Saunders
Over 1.9K Ranker voters have come together to rank this list of Great Essayists
- 11984, Animal Farm
- 2The Essays of Michel de Montaigne
- 3The fortune of the Republic, English traits, Representative Men
- 4Novum organum, New Atlantis, Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning
- 5The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone
- 6Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
- 7A Dictionary of the English Language, Samuel Johnson's Dictionary: Selections from the 1755 Work That Defined the English Language, Life of Mr Richard Savage
- 8The Man Who Was Thursday, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, The Everlasting Man
- 9Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Play It As It Lays, The Year of Magical Thinking
- 10Gulliver's Travels, Gulliver's Travels, A Tale of a Tub
- 11The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Screwtape Letters
- 12Anna Karenina, War and Peace, The Death of Ivan Ilyich
- 13A History of Western Philosophy, The Analysis of Mind, Why I Am Not a Christian
- 14God Is Not Great
- 15Brave New World, Island, Point Counter Point
- 16An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Four Dissertations, Essays
- 17Labyrinths, Ficciones, The Aleph
- 18
Charles Lamb
The prose works of Charles Lamb, The Essays of Elia, The last essays of Elia - 19To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando: A Biography
- 20The Waste Land, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
- 21nfinite Jest, The Pale King, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
- 22The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, Compleated Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
- 23On the Suffering of the World, The World as Will and Representation, The Art of Being Right
- 24Duet for Cannibals, Promised Lands, Brother Carl
- 25Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, The Elements of Style
- 26Les Misérables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
- 27Invisible Man, The collected essays of Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act
- 28Collected Works: Wise Blood, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, The Violent Bear It Away
- 29
William Hazlitt
Characters of Shakespear's Plays, The Doubtful Plays Of William Shakespeare, On the Pleasure of Hating - 30The Turn of the Screw, The Portrait of a Lady, The Golden Bowl
- 31Brideshead Revisited, A Handful of Dust, Decline and Fall
- 32The Great Gatsby, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, This Side of Paradise
- 33The Third Man, The Fallen Idol, The Power and the Glory
- 34Confessions of a Mask, Acts of Worship
- 35Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, Dress Your Children In Corduroy and Denim, Naked
- 36Late Harvest, For the Time Being, Annie Dillard Reader
- 37The evidences of the Christian religion, The doctrine of the passions explained and improved, The vision of Mirzah
- 38Piece of Flesh, The May Anthologies
- 39Cultural Amnesia, Unreliable Memoirs
- 40I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts On Being A Woman, Wallflower at the Orgy, Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women
- 41Experience, Time's Arrow, Yellow Dog
- 42Late Harvest, Habitations of the Word, Test of Time
- 43A Catalogue of Crime: A Reader's Guide to the Literature of Mystery, Detection, and Related Genres
- 44The Color Purple, Possessing the Secret of Joy, The Temple of My Familiar
- 45Fame & Folly: Essays, Quarrel & Quandary, The Din in the Head: Essays
- 46Poems of Wordsworth, guide to English literature and Essay on Gray, Matthew Arnold's books
- 47Tenth of December: Stories
- 48
Edward Hoagland
Cat Man, Sex and the River Styx 
49Joseph Epstein
Snobbery: The American Version, Pertinent Players, Friendship: An Exposé- 50O Presidente Negro, Voyage to the Sky, The Adventures of Lúcia Little Nose
- 51Death Comes for the Archbishop, A Lost Lady, My Ántonia
- 52Letters to Olga, Politics and Conscience, The Art of the Impossible
- 53Pensieri, Detti memorabili di Filippo Ottonieri, Scritti e frammenti autobiografici
- 54
Julian Dumitrascu
https://medium.com/@JulianDumitrasc - 55Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux
- 56achelorhood, Against Joie de Vivre, Portrait of My Body
- 57
Geoff Dyer
But Beautiful: A Book about Jazz - 58The Boys of My Youth, In Zanesville
- 59Faces of America: How 12 Extraordinary Americans Reclaimed Their Pasts, Thirteen Ways of Looking At a Black Man
- 60To Touch the Water, Heart Mountain
- 61
Simon Leys
L' humeur, l'honneur, l'horreur - 62Mistérios de Lisboa, Amor de Perdição
- 63
Meghan Daum
My Misspent Youth, The Quality of Life Report - 64
John Jeremiah Sullivan
Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter's Son, Farrar, Pulphead: Essays - 65
Dubravka Ugrešić
In the Jaws of Life, Kultura laži, Thank you for not reading - 66An Armada of Thirty Whales
- 67The Holder of the World, The Tree Bride, The Middleman and Other Stories
- 68American Sublime, The Venus Hottentot, Power and Possibility
- 69Involuntary Lyrics, King of Shadows, Into Distances
- 70Women on War, Eggs in the Lake, Word Wounds & Water Flowers
- 71Don't Think, Smile!, Questions Freshmen Ask
- 72
Roger Kimball
The Future of the European Past, The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America, Lives of the Mind: The Use and Abuse of Intelligence from Hegel to Wodehouse - 73The Lazarus Project
- 74My Father Is Coming, The United Nations of Times Square
- 75Selected Poems
- 76Gather at the River: Notes From the Post-Millennial South
- 77Lost in the Meritocracy, The Unbinding, Up in the Air
- 78Drop City, A Friend of the Earth, The Tortilla Curtain
