Literature Focus II. Nonfiction of the 18th Century

A New World of Ideas At the dawn of the 18^th c. in England, the movement known as the Enlightenment was ushered in by the writings of two major philosophical thinkers, John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. Their writings inspired the English people to rethink all aspects of society, question accepted beliefs, and explore new ideas. In this rich environment of ideas, nonfiction became a favored literary form.

Though the aristocracy was the primary audience of the Enlightenment writers, the spread of education in the 17^th century had caused the literacy rate in England to soar among the middle and lower classes. The newly literate public’s appetite for information grew, and London became home to a number of periodicals. The practices of modern publishing, such as the use of copyright and royalty fees, began to emerge in London at this time.

The Development of the Essay The contents of most 18^th-century periodicals consisted of essays. The essay is a short work of nonfiction that offers a writer’s opinion on a particular subject. The essay form became popular after the 16^th-century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne published a collection of writings titled Essais, which means “attempts.” In 1597, Francis Bacon became the first prominent English essayist when he published the first edition of his Essays. From then on, the essay became a popular means of expression—a way for English writers to air their views on public matters and to promote social reform. Works labeled “essays” were even written in verse, such as Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism.

Formal essays are prose compositions in which an author writes as an impersonal, objective authority on a particular subject, with the purpose of instructing or persuading his or her readers. Using the third-person point of view instead of the first-person, the author strikes a serious tone and develops a main idea, or thesis, in a logical, highly organized way. Two 18^th c. writers, Daniel Defoe and Samuel Johnson, were famous practitioners of the formal essay. Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt continued the formal essay tradition into the 19^th c., as did Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey, Matthew Arnold, and John Stuart Mill. In the 20^th c., the formal essay was a mainstay in such fields as history, literature, and the natural and social sciences. In newspapers today, most editorials and many opinion pieces are formal essays.

Informal essays are essays in which writers express their opinions without adopting a completely serious or formal tone. Informal essays are less structured, and typically include personal details and humor conveyed in a conversational style. Although writers may compose informal essays to instruct or persuade, they often write primarily to entertain their readers. For example, in the 18^th c., Joseph Addison and Richard Steele wrote and published many instructive yet humorously satirical essays in The Tatler and The Spectator on such topics as marriage, education, and the folly and extravagance of the times. 19^th and 20^th-century writers, including Robert Louis Stevenson, Max Beerbohm, G.K. Chesterton, Virginia Woolf, and George Orwell, contributed brilliantly to the personal essay form. Their essays address subjects ranging from the important to the trivial, in both cases providing fresh insights on life.

The formal essay has changed little since Bacon. The informal essay, however, has changed greatly. Novelist and essayist Cynthia Ozick thinks that one reason for this change might be the essayist’s adaptations of fictional techniques, “including revelations, moments of suspense, moments of climax, moments of crescendo,” as well as dialogue and detail. Another reason for the essay’s renewed popularity may be the number and variety of forums for the personal essay in both print and electronic media—most recently in a multitude of blogs on the Internet.