Jason Childs – författare

From the country's beginning, essayists in the United States have used their prose to articulate the many ways their individuality has been shaped by the politics, social life, and culture of this place. The Cambridge History of the American Essay offers the fullest account to date of this diverse and complex history. From Puritan writings to essays by Indigenous authors, from Transcendentalist and Pragmatist texts to Harlem Renaissance essays, from New Criticism to New Journalism: The story of the American essay is told here, beginning in the early eighteenth century and ending with the vibrant, heterogeneous scene of contemporary essayistic writing. The essay in the US has taken many forms: nature writing, travel writing, the genteel tradition, literary criticism, hybrid genres such as the essay film and the photo essay. Across genres and identities, this volume offers a stirring account of American essayism into the twenty-first century.

From ancient influences on the essay as a form of rhetoric to the Irish essay as performance, from British imperial propaganda to African postcolonial resistance, from political pamphlets to the rise of literary professionalism, from gastronomy to ecocriticism, The Cambridge History of the British Essay offers the first authoritative single-volume history of the form's development within the British literary tradition. It restores to the contemporary understanding of the essay an appreciation of its true richness and diversity. The fifty contributors to this volume come from widely diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise that brings out neglected pockets of essayistic activity, by women, by persons of colour, by poets and pamphleteers. Together, they show how the form morphs to serve new contexts and concerns, remaining a vital genre of literary 'attempt' in the fields of journalism, academic study, autobiography and other forms of life writing, and online language arts.