w Ancient / Classical
- Marcus Aurelius — Meditations (180 AD)
- Seneca — Letters from a Stoic
Renaissance / Early Modern
- Montaigne — Essays (1580) — literally invented the essay form
- Francis Bacon — Essays (1597)
18th Century
- Benjamin Franklin — Autobiography (1791)
- Samuel Johnson — The Rambler essays
19th Century
- Ralph Waldo Emerson — Self-Reliance (1841)
- Henry David Thoreau — Walden (1854)
20th Century
- George Orwell — Politics and the English Language (1946) — read this first, before anything else
- E.B. White — Once More to the Lake (1941)
- James Baldwin — Notes of a Native Son (1955)
- Joan Didion — Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)
- David Foster Wallace — Consider the Lobster (2004)
Contemporary
- Paul Graham — essays 2000s–present
- Christopher Hitchens — Arguably (2011)
George Orwell Read Politics and the English Language first
https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Extras/Keynes_Newton/
This Is Water David Foster Wallace Commencement Speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCbGM4mqEVw
Christopher Hitchens His essays collected in Arguably. Teaches confidence of voice — he never hedges when he doesn’t need to. Good antidote if your writing tends to be timid.
James Baldwin Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time
Michel de Montaigne https://hyperessays.net/essays/toc/