On Essays
An essay (essai) on essays (exagium).
“The essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything.”
— Aldous Huxley
Why are essays so popular on Substack?
Huxley was right. Since time immemorial humans have used essays to talk about how they experience and exist in the world.
The most popular form of writing on Substack has to be the essay. Substack was founded in 2017. Since then it has seen significant growth, with over 50 million monthly active subscribers and more than 5 million paid subscriptions, and 17,000+ writers earning income on the platform. A lot of this growth was fuelled by essays.
People love writing essays on this platform. On Substack, you’ll find:
personal essays (grief, love, parenting, identity)
cultural essays (film, art, fashion)
political or philosophical essays (theory, policy, behaviour)
craft essays (writing, productivity, creativity)
Essays are popular on Substack because the platform is built for intimate, direct communication between writers and readers, which aligns perfectly with the nature of essays which are personal, reflective, idea-driven, and often unconstrained by formal rules.
What type of essays do you enjoy reading on Substack? What type of essays do you enjoy writing on Substack?
But…
Where does the word essay come from?
The word "essay" originates from the French word essai, meaning "trial" or "attempt," which in turn comes from the Late Latin exagium, meaning "a weighing" or "a test."
This little fact made me so happy as a reader and writer because I often realize that essays are just attempts to test and share my thoughts with the world. Does this raw observation or thought resonate with you? Will you take a few minutes to read this? Will you share my world view for some time?
The term was first popularized in a literary context by the 16th-century French writer Michel de Montaigne, who used it to describe his short, reflective writings in Essais (1580). For Montaigne, an essai was an exploratory piece or an attempt to understand himself and the human condition through personal reflection and intellectual inquiry.
Unlike formal treatises or scientific discourses, his essays were informal, meandering, and deeply subjective, blending anecdotes, philosophical musings, and candid introspection. The form was later embraced and adapted in English by writers like Francis Bacon, whose more structured and aphoristic style offered a counterpoint to Montaigne’s rambling, intuitive approach.
Over the centuries, the essay evolved into a versatile literary genre used in journalism, academia, and creative writing, but it has always retained its original essence: a personal and provisional attempt to explore a thought or idea.
Why essays became a burden?
Many of of us grew up detesting this form of writing in high school. We were graded and given lots of critical feedback about our essays in our daily language classes. You were encouraged to write essays about the books you read, a childhood memory or a vacation with a family. We did this repeatedly over several years. Some of us became better writers. Many of us got worst. But the essay stayed with us through time.
We were then expected to write essays about university or college coursework. A standard university essay format typically includes an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. While specific requirements may vary, a common structure involves
An introductory paragraph with a thesis statement
Body paragraphs that develop the thesis with evidence
A concluding paragraph that summarizes the main points
The university essay should also adhere to formatting guidelines like margins, spacing, and font. Write one essay, get graded and then repeat again. This was something we were forced to do regularly without too much say on what the essay was going to be about. We spent a lot of time writing essays about topics that did not deeply interest us. Somewhere along the way the essay became a burden. Then we started work and our essays became long emails, one page memo’s and short texts.
But…
What are the different types of essays?
This was a fun discovery. I spend a lot of time reading essays on Substack. I also made a list of 300 such essays that brought me joy on the platform. I normally categorize them all as personal essays. However there is a lot more to this writing composition form than just a personal essay. The different types of essays are:
Narrative Essay: Tells a story, often personal, focusing on events, experiences, or characters. Example: "The Day I Got Lost at the Fair"
Descriptive Essay: Uses vivid language to create a detailed picture of a person, place, thing, or event, appealing to the reader's senses. Example: "My Grandmother’s Kitchen"
Expository Essay: Explains a topic, provides information, or clarifies a process. Example: "How Solar Panels Work"
Argumentative Essay: Presents a claim and uses evidence to persuade the reader to agree with the author's viewpoint. Example: "Why Schools Should Start Later in the Day"
Compare and Contrast Essay: Examines the similarities and differences between two or more subjects. Example: "Online Classes vs. Traditional Classrooms"
Cause and Effect Essay: Explains the causes of an event or situation and its effects. Example: "The Impact of Social Media on Teen Mental Health"
Process Essay: Explains how to do something or how something works. Example: "How to Bake a Chocolate Cake"
Persuasive Essay: A type of argumentative essay that aims to convince the reader to adopt a particular stance. Example: "Why Everyone Should Adopt a Pet from a Shelter"
You get the gist. What type of essay do you like reading this most? What type of essay do you like writing the most? I’m really curious.
How did essays evolve over time?
“An essay is a thing of the imagination. If there is information in an essay, it is by-the-by, and if there is an opinion, one need not trust it for the long run. A genuine essay rarely has an educational, polemical, or sociopolitical use; it is the movement of a free mind at play.”
— Cynthia Ozick
The earliest form of the essay emerged in the 5th Century BCE to the 3rd Century CE. It took several different forms and shapes around the world. In Greece the Socratic dialogues (Plato) and Aristotle's Rhetoric, Poetics laid the groundwork for argumentative and exploratory writing. In Rome, Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius and Cicero’s orations and treatises often reflect on ethical questions and advanced structured argumentation in a form resembling the modern essay. In the Indian sub continent, works like Kautilya’s Arthashastra or Bharata’s Natyashastra present structured arguments and reflections on governance, economics, and aesthetics.
From the 8th Century CE to the 14th Century CE, the Islamic Golden Age saw scholars like Al-Jahiz, Al-Farabi, Ibn Khaldun, and Al-Ghazali write essays on ethics, politics, theology, and science. Al-Jahiz’s Book of Misers (9th Century CE) is a witty, observational text often cited as an early personal essay. In China, thinkers like Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan (8th Century CE) pioneered the guwen style: clear, elegant essays reacting against ornate prose. A uniquely Japanese essayistic tradition, zuihitsu means “follow the brush,” allowing spontaneous, nonlinear reflection. Sei Shōnagon’s The Pillow Book (10th Century CE/1000’s) and Yoshida Kenkō’s Essays in Idleness (14th Century CE/1400’s) are foundational. These essays combine observation, diary, poetry, and moral rumination, showing the essay’s early potential as a deeply personal, aesthetic form.
In the 15th century, Michel Montaigne was credited with inventing the modern essay as a literary form with his book Essais (1580). His essays were personal, meandering, and philosophical, often blending autobiography with classical references. Francis Bacon adapted Montaigne’s form but made it more structured and aphoristic. His Essays (1597, expanded 1625) are brief, moral reflections (e.g., Of Studies, Of Truth). They emphasize clarity, order, and pragmatism, reflecting the scientific and rational spirit of the English Renaissance.
In the 18th century, Richard Steele and Joseph Addison published The Tatler (Steele) and The Spectator (Addison), which brought essays to the middle-class public. These essays were short, witty, and socially observant, addressing manners, politics, and literature. These were early precursors to the newspaper or newsletter form that are widely adopted today. Jesuit missionaries, trading scholars, and colonial administrators brought European essay forms to Latin America, Africa, and Asia. In colonial India, English-language essays became tools for both oppression and resistance. While essayistic forms in Africa were largely oral (proverbs, debates, folktales), colonization introduced written essay structures.
“A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out..”
— Virginia Woolf
In the 19th century, writers like Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, and Thomas De Quincey in England developed a literary, introspective essay, combining lyricism, criticism, and memoir. Essays became more emotional, poetic, and exploratory. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau in America used the essay to express Transcendentalist ideas. Self-Reliance (Emerson) and Civil Disobedience (Thoreau) are foundational political/philosophical texts.
In the 20th century, the essay became more fragmented, experimental, and self-referential. The important essay writers of the era included: Virginia Woolf wrote A Room of One’s Own that blends narrative, critique, and feminist argument; George Orwell wrote essay collections like Shooting an Elephant, Politics and the English Language that reflect political conscience and clarity; James Baldwin wrote Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next Time that brought autobiographical power to racial and social commentary. At the same time the Academic Essay emerged in schools and universities. The essay became formalized into expository, analytical, argumentative, and comparative types. Influenced by German scholarly traditions, the academic essay prioritized thesis development, logical structure and evidence-based argument. It became a primary form of assessment in liberal education.
In the 21st century, the essay entered the Digital and Contemporary Age. The rise of blogs, newsletters, and online journals has revived the personal essay. Writers like Joan Didion, Leslie Jamison, and Zadie Smith continue the tradition in contemporary prose. Writers like Pico Iyer, Teju Cole, Rohinton Mistry, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie write essays that bring multicultural, global perspectives. Online platforms like Substack, Medium, personal blogs democratize essay writing, allowing niche voices and experimental forms to thrive. The digital age allows for video essays, photo essays, and hypertext essays, expanding the format beyond pure text. YouTube creators (e.g., Nerdwriter) use the essay form in audio-visual rhetoric. Podcasts and audio storytelling also echo essayistic structures like narrative arc, personal reflection and cultural critique. Online platforms enable cross-linguistic, cross-cultural publication from video essays in Korean and Arabic, to literary newsletters in Nigeria and Brazil. The rise of translation networks allows essays in Urdu, Swahili, Tagalog, and other languages to gain international readership.
The essay has indeed come a long way and humans have used it in creative ways to communicate the important personal, social, cultural, scientific and political realities of the time. With the rise of LLM’s and digital writing tools, where will the essay go from here? I am excited to see the answer to this question unravel in the near future. Now…
Why do essays matter (to me)?
“I really love that idea of the essay as an investigation. That's all anyone's life is..”
— David Shields
I did not enjoy reading till the eleventh grade. Non fiction writing made me a reader. The books I loved the most included sports autobiographies, narrative non fiction titles and essay collections. I read a lot of essays before I turned to fiction. It was my gateway drug to making reading a core part of my identity. There were several essay writers that shaped my thinking over time.
Reading Joan Didion’s, My Year of Magical Thinking got me through a difficult period in my life where my loved ones where ill and I could do nothing about it. Reading Paul Graham’s essays helped me get excited about solving human problems through an entrepreneurial lens.
Reading Haruki Murakami’s, What I Think About When I Think About Running helped me get back to running and take better care of my health. Reading Ramachandra Guha’s essays helped me develop a deep appreciation for the complex and nuanced history of any country.
Reading Pico Iyer’s, Video Nights in Kathmandu let me travel the world and experience different cultures from my bedroom. Reading David Sedaris’, Me Talk Pretty One Day helped me develop a sense of wonder for the small, mundane moments—awkward encounters and misunderstandings we encounter everyday as humans.
Reading Atul Gawande’s, Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, made me look at the complex multifaceted emotional and physical demands on the physician and medical professional. Reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s, Notes on Grief helped me understand that grief takes many shapes, directions and forms in your life.
Reading Geoff Dyer’s The Last Days of Roger Federer helped me appreciate the vulnerability and ephemeral nature of the lives of athletes and artists. Reading John Green’s, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet helped me develop a framework to review all kinds of experiences from the QWERTY keyboard to the Halley's Comet to the Penguins of Madagascar.
Essays matter deeply to me in the most personal and intimate way as a human being, reader and writer. They gave me many hours of comfort, company and undivided attention in the good and bad times.
Why essays should matter (more)?
Essays are flexible because they allow you to write about personal experiences in a manner that makes sense to you but also has universal appeal.
Essays have structure because unlike casual writing or social media posts, essays require a beginning, middle, and end that hold together with purpose.
Essays sit at the intersection of reason (like research papers) and emotion (like storytelling).
Essays enhance critical thinking because you have to analyze, evaluate, and synthesize information to understand complex topics or challenge your own assumptions.
Essays give you a first person perspective of how a sport can push any human to their physical limits but also support other players as they evolve as athletes.
Essays help you share your honest and raw thoughts about the books, films, music, dance and fine art you love.
Essays let you explain the highs and lows of your professional career and show you how all human endeavours aim to improve or help humans in one way or another.
Essays expand your understanding of politics, sexuality, culture and religion by presenting familiar and contrary perspectives in an accessible written form.
Essays humanize scientific ideas by telling you about the years of struggle and sacrifice that lead to a scientific discovery.
Essays give us space to think out loud, make meaning, and move people—all in one form.
My Essay Recommendations (Collections, Archives)
This is an endless list and it can go on forever. But these links are a good start. They include a mix of essays in books, websites and blogging platforms.
If you liked this essay you may enjoy reading,
Why Humans Create Art?
I have been thinking about my relationship with Art a lot. I am sure other humans do the same. It is a funny word right?
If this essay got you curious about essays or added any value to your life please do consider subscribing to this newsletter.
I would be overjoyed if you leave a comment with a recommendation to an essay or essay collection that moved you in one way or another.
Until next time,
Keep Learning.
Abhishek
Hey Abhishek!
I enjoyed your piece, though I do not feel that it gave *much* nuance to my knowledge, the history of the term "essay" and where it derived from was intriguing. I enjoy writing about my experiences in the world, a personal essayist here. I also, on occasion, write think pieces.
Recommendation: Simple Truths by Kent Nerburn