National Essay Day actually falls on the birthday of Michel de Montaigne, regarded as the originator of the essay. An essay puts forward views or judgements of the author of a specific topic, and does not need to be particularly academic.
Many famous novelists were also essayists, Virginia Woolf, for example, published several incredibly impactful essays. Her piece “A Room of One’s Own” is considered to be a breakthrough not only in advocacy for gender equality, but also for Literature as a whole. She is but one of the people who prove that essays, although traditionally rigid, can be used as acts of rebellion against the world that we live in. Other famous essays which branch across several topics include Pessoa’s “The Book of Disquiet”, Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant”, and Baldwin’s “Notes of a Native Son”. Woolf utilized anecdotes in a lot of her work, but some authors take this even further.
Narrative essays are a more contemporary (and entertaining) version of their older counterpart. They are stories written in first person which comment on a specific topic through the plot, or character’s own comments within the narrative. One especially memorable narrative essay is “Mother Rage: Theory and Practice” by Anne Lamott, in which Lamott recounts losing her temper at her son, wondering, for example, if she “threatened to have (her) son’s pets put to sleep”. The essay is humorous and draws on the innumerable antics of children, but centrally it is a commentary on the relationship between mother and child. As you can see (or I hope you see), essays in the modern day do not need to be the strict, educational pieces of work that you were forced to do at GCSE English at school.
Still not enough to motivate you to read or write? Well, several websites offer a monetary reward for a good essay, so think of today as a chance for a business venture!
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