6 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
British-Swiss author who has built a career making philosophy accessible to general audiences — applying philosophical traditions to modern anxieties about status, work, relationships, and travel — and founding The School of Life.
American memoirist and essayist — author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things — who hiked the Pacific Crest Trail alone in grief after her mother's death and wrote the most widely read hiking memoir — also the anonymous author of the Dear Sugar advice column.
British novelist and essayist — author of 1984 and Animal Farm — who created the modern political dystopia and wrote the most influential political essays in English — died at 46 leaving two books that are still the primary reference points for totalitarianism.
American essayist — longtime editor of The American Scholar — author of dozens of essay collections — Northwestern University lecturer — the most elegant American essayist of the 20th and 21st centuries in the tradition of Montaigne, Lamb, and Hazlitt.
American novelist and essayist — author of Bad Behavior, Two Girls Fat and Thin, and Veronica — who writes fiction about sexuality, power, and moral complexity with unflinching precision — among the most critically respected American literary fiction writers.
British essayist and critic — the greatest essayist in the English language after Montaigne according to many assessments — whose essays on painting, literature, and character combined personal passion with critical intelligence in a way that has not been surpassed.