INFORMAL ESSAY
Essay: A moderately brief prose discussion of a restricted topic. Because of the wide application of the term, no satisfactory definition can be arrived at (one book on the essay spends forty-three pages on "What Is an Essay?"). Nor can a wholly acceptable classification of essay types be made. Among the terms that have been used in attempting classifications of the essay are: moralizing, critical, character, anecdotal, letter, narrative, aphoristic, descriptive, reflective, biographical, historical, periodical, didactic, editorial, whimsical, psychological, outdoor, nature, cosmical, and personal. Such a list, although depressingly long, is incomplete; obviously the task of classifying the essay, like that of defining it, has eluded human skill.
A basic and very useful division can, however, be made: Formal and Informal essays. The Informal Essay, sometimes called the "true" essay, includes moderately brief aphoristic essays like Bacon's, Periodical Essays like Addison's, and Personal Essays like Lamb's. Qualities which make an essay informal include: the personal element (self-revelation, individual tastes and experiences, confidential manner), humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconventionality or novelty of theme, freshness of form, freedom from stiffness and affectation, incomplete or tentative treatment of topic.
The points of view and wide range of themes in the Informal Essay may be suggested by citing a few typical titles: "On the Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places" ( Stevenson), "A Cure for Fits in Married Ladies" ( Steele), "A Chapter on Ears" ( Lamb), "A Dissertation on Roast Pig" ( Lamb), "Getting Up on Cold Mornings" ( Hunt), "On Going a Journey" ( Hazlitt - advocating the solitary hike), "Every Man's Natural Desire to Be Somebody Else" ( Crothers). Qualities of the Formal Essay include: sober seriousness of purpose, dignity, logical organization, length.
The term may include both short discussions, expository or argumentative, such as the serious magazine article, and longer treatises, like the chapters in Carlyle Heroes and HeroWorship . However, a sharp distinction between even Formal and Informal Essays can not be maintained at all times. In the following sketch the Informal Essay will be given chief consideration, since it lies more completely in the realm of literature.
The Formal Essay of the early nineteenth century was largely the result of the appearance of the critical magazine, especially the Edinburgh Review ( 1802), the Quarterly Review ( 1809), and the Westminster Review ( 1824). Book reviews in the form of long critical essays were written by Francis Jeffrey, T. B. Macaulay, Thomas De Quincey, Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Carlyle, and later by George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, and many others. The manner of the Formal Essay appears also in the works of many other prose writers of the century. The separate chapters in the books of such men as Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Walter Pater, Charles Kingsley, Leslie Stephen, Walter Bagehot, T. H. Huxley, Matthew Arnold, and Cardinal Newman are essay -like treatments of phases of the historical, biographical, scientific, educational, religious, and ethical topics concerned.
The Personal Essay: Nineteenth Century
A great revival of interest in the writing of both Formal and Informal Essays accompanied the triumph of the Romantic Movement and the founding of new types of magazines in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and brought about new forms and fashions. The informal type responded to the romantic impulses of the time. The production of the Personal Essay, too, was stimulated greatly by the development of a new type of periodical: Blackwood's Magazine ( 1817) and the London Magazine ( 1820), which provided a market for the essays of Lamb, Hazlitt, Hunt, De Quincey, and others. Lamb Essays of Elia (begun in 1820) exhibited an intimate style, an autobiographical interest, a light and easy humor and sentiment, an urbanity and unerring literary taste which have made Lamb one of the favorite essayists of all time. Even the novelists took up essay writing ( Dickens, Sketches by Boz , 1836; Thackeray, Roundabout Papers , 1860- 1863). Though they followed in many respects their eighteenth-century predecessors, this group of nineteenth-century essayists accomplished a great change in the essay form. Freed from the space restrictions of the Tatler type and encouraged by a reading public eager for "original" work, these writers modified the Addisonian essay by making it more personal, longer, and more varied in theme, and by freeing it from the stereotyped features of the earlier form.
to the Top
