essay

An essay is a short work that treats a topic from an author's personal point of view, often taking into account subjective experiences and personal reflections upon them. Essays are usually brief works in prose, but works in verse are sometimes dubbed essays (e.g. Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism (1711) and An Essay on Man (1733-1734). Many voluminous and famous works refer to themselves as essays (e.g. John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), Thomas Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798)).

Virtually anything may be the subject of an essay. Topics may include actual happenings, issues of human life, morality, ethics, religion and many others. An essay is, by definition, a work of non-fiction, and is often expository.