Brik’s Comments (group member since Feb 10, 2008)

Brik’s comments from the Essays group.

Post here you essay writing tips.

Here are some to begin with:
http://lklivingston.tripod.com/essay/
https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu...
http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/wri...

Hi Richard, yes, these examples are apparently obligatory reads, which doesn't make it more fun reading them. I don't like all of them but they are considered classics.
If you have favoute (contemporary) essays, please add them here and will add them to the chronological list.

*Jonathan Swift - A modest proposal (1729)
http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html

*Thomas Jefferson - The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America (1776, 4th of July)
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/...

*George Orwell - Shooting an elephant (1936)
http://www.online-literature.com/orwe...

*Langston Hughes - Salvation (from The Big Sea (1940))
http://www.spiritwatch.org/firelangsa...

*E.B. White - Once More to the Lake (1941)
http://www.moonstar.com/~acpjr/Blackb...

*George Orwell - Politics and the English language (1946)
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/...

*Bruce Catton - Grant and Lee: A Study in Contrasts (1955)
http://faculty.ucc.edu/english-chewni...

*Martin Luther King Jr. - A letter from Birmingham jail (1963)
http://www.historicaltextarchive.com/...

*Martin Luther King Jr. - I have a dream (1963)
http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Martin...

*Judy Syfers - I want a wife (1972)
http://www.verge.demon.co.uk/kerb/wan...

Which essayists do you consider to be part of the essay canon?

Please add essays to either the discussion topic called "Links to online essays" or the group.

Wikipedia:
-List of essayists
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_...
-Essays by author
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category...

Lynn Z. Bloom (Once More to the Essay: The Essay Canon and Textbook Anthologies
symploke - Volume 8, Number 1-2, 2000, pp. 20-35) has researched 58 books with essay anthologies: of the 4200 essayists she considers 4 percent, i.e. 174, as canoncial.
Top 10:
1. George Orwell
2. E.B. White
3. Joan Didion
4. Lewis Thomas
5. Henry David Thoreau
6. Virginia Woolf
7. Jonathan Swift
8. Martin Luther King, Jr.
9. James Thurber
10. Mark Twain
http://chronicle.com/colloquy/99/essa...
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