An essayist is an author who writes compositions which can be about any particular subject. Although, the essay which is written by the essayist is usually shorter and less methological than a formal finished treatise.

A representative list of famous essayists:

• Matthew Arnold
• Hilaire Belloc
• William Cobbett
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• William Hazlitt
• Hugh Hood
• Samuel Johnson
• Michel de Montaigne
• Joyce Carol Oates
• Katherine Ann Porter
• Bertrand Russell
• Lytton Strachey
• Voltaire
• Rebecca West
• E. B. White
• Virginia Woolf

See also: Lists of authors