At Home (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Gore Vidal
- First Published: 1988
- Type of Work: Essays
- Genres: Nonfiction, Essays
- Subjects: Politics, Literature, Writing, Literary criticism
The essay as a literary form was introduced in the sixteenth century by the French aristocrat Michel Eyquem de Montaigne. He used the word essai (an attempt) to describe the essential nature of his loosely structured pieces: as Gore Vidal expresses it, “an attempt to order one's impressions and reflections on a given subject.” Over the centuries the essay has had many distinguished practitioners in Europe and the United States. Names such as William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Mark Twain, James Thurber, and E. B. White immediately come to mind. In the...
[The entire page is 1899 words long]
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