# What is a personal essay, and where should you start reading them? Canonical: https://zestasy.com/wiki/what-is-a-personal-essay/ Section: Zestasy Wiki > Books & ideas · Updated: 2026-10-14 · Publisher: Zestasy *Zestasy Wiki: our reference answers. Checked for facts and sources; less curated than the magazine.* A personal essay is a short piece of non-fiction in which the writer starts from their own experience, a habit, a memory, a small event, and thinks their way outward towards something larger, in a candid, conversational voice. The form goes back to Montaigne in the sixteenth century. Good places to start are Natalia Ginzburg's The Little Virtues, Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad About My Neck and Phillip Lopate's anthology The Art of the Personal Essay. An essay at school was an argument with a thesis and three supporting points. A personal essay is almost the opposite: it starts with a person and a question, and lets you watch someone think. When it works, it is like the best kind of conversation with a clever, honest friend. ## What makes an essay "personal" There is no strict definition, but the personal essay usually has: - **A first-person voice.** The writer is present, with their opinions, doubts and quirks. - **A starting point in experience.** A walk, a meal, an illness, a pair of shoes, a friendship. - **A movement outward.** The small subject opens onto a bigger one: time, love, work, how to live. - **Candour.** The writer admits things, including what they do not know. - **Room to wander.** Digressions are part of the pleasure. Essays are often divided into formal ones, serious and logically organised, and informal ones, marked by personal voice, humour and a rambling structure, [as Wikipedia's overview of the essay notes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essay). The personal essay lives at the informal end. ## A very short history The word comes from the French *essayer*, to try. Michel de Montaigne, whose *Essais* first appeared in 1580, used it for his attempts to put his thoughts into words, and in doing so more or less invented the form. Francis Bacon's *Essays* of 1597 were the first English works to call themselves essays. The form flourished in the periodicals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and twentieth-century writers such as Virginia Woolf and E. B. White carried it further, the same overview notes. One nineteenth-century landmark is Charles Lamb's *Essays of Elia*, which appeared in the *London Magazine* from 1820 and as a book in 1823. Lamb wrote under the pen name Elia, in a personal, conversational tone that many readers still find charming, [according to Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essays_of_Elia). The collection includes a famous comic piece, *A Dissertation upon Roast Pig*. ## Five places to start **1. Michel de Montaigne, Essays (1580).** The source of everything. Start with the short ones; we suggest which in [where to start with Montaigne](https://zestasy.com/wiki/montaigne-essays/). **2. Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia (1823).** For the gentle, funny, digressive English tradition. Try *Dream-Children* and *Old China*, often counted among his finest. **3. Natalia Ginzburg, The Little Virtues (1962).** Our top recommendation. *Le piccole virtù* (1962) collects short pieces that include a portrait of the writer Cesare Pavese, [per Lex.dk](https://lex.dk/Natalia_Ginzburg). Plain, piercing, unforgettable prose. More on it in [our page on The Little Virtues](https://zestasy.com/wiki/the-little-virtues/). **4. Nora Ephron, I Feel Bad About My Neck (2006).** A collection of humorous essays on getting older and being a woman, written when Ephron was in her sixties, [as Wikipedia describes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Feel_Bad_About_My_Neck). Proof that the personal essay can be laugh-out-loud funny. **5. Phillip Lopate (ed.), The Art of the Personal Essay (1994).** The great anthology, running from Seneca and Plutarch to James Baldwin and Adrienne Rich, grouped by themes such as ambition, education and leisure and idleness, [as the Christian Science Monitor reported](https://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/amphtml/1994/0325/25191.html) on publication. Lopate called the personal essay a deeply humanistic form. Use it as a tasting menu and follow the writers you like. ## How to read them Slowly, and one at a time. A personal essay is short but dense with voice; three in a row blur together. Read one with a coffee, then go about your day and see if it follows you around. If you want to try writing one, start with a small, specific thing that bothers or delights you and keep asking why. Our mindset page on [journaling if you hate writing](https://zestasy.com/wiki/journaling-if-you-hate-writing/) is a gentle first step. ## FAQ ### Is a personal essay the same as a memoir? They overlap. A memoir tells a longer story of a life or a period; a personal essay is shorter and usually uses a piece of experience to explore an idea. ### Is a blog post a personal essay? It can be, if it has the voice, the honesty and the movement from small to large. Most blog posts are not trying to be. ### Are there Italian essayists besides Ginzburg? Yes. Umberto Eco's comic essays are a lighter example; see [is Umberto Eco funny?](https://zestasy.com/wiki/eco-how-to-travel-with-a-salmon/). ### Do I need to read them in order? Never. Essay collections are made for dipping. ## Sources - [Wikipedia: Essay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essay) - [Wikipedia: Essays of Elia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essays_of_Elia) - [Lex.dk: Natalia Ginzburg](https://lex.dk/Natalia_Ginzburg) - [Wikipedia: I Feel Bad About My Neck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Feel_Bad_About_My_Neck) - [Christian Science Monitor: For the Love of Other Writers](https://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/amphtml/1994/0325/25191.html) ## Related - [Where should you start with Montaigne's Essays?](https://zestasy.com/wiki/montaigne-essays/) - [What is Natalia Ginzburg's The Little Virtues?](https://zestasy.com/wiki/the-little-virtues/) - [Is Umberto Eco funny?](https://zestasy.com/wiki/eco-how-to-travel-with-a-salmon/) - [Is journaling worth it if you hate writing?](https://zestasy.com/wiki/journaling-if-you-hate-writing/) - [What is a commonplace book?](https://zestasy.com/wiki/commonplace-book/) - [All Books & ideas answers in the Wiki](https://zestasy.com/wiki/#books)