THE MOST ANTHOLOGIZED ESSAYS OF THE LAST 25 YEARS
"Depending on who you are, the word “essay” may make you squirm. After all, here in America at least, our introduction to the essay often comes complete with five paragraphs and “repeat but rephrase” and other soul-killing rules. But in actuality, essays are nothing like the staid, formulaic, boring things they make you write in high school. They’re all over the place. They’re wild. Or at least they can be. After all, the word
essay comes from the French verb
essayer, which means “to try.” Essays are merely attempts, at expression, or at proof; they claim to be nothing more. I’ve always thought that was lovely.
For this list, I looked at 14 essay anthologies, plus the three volumes of Lee Gutkind’s
The Best Creative Nonfiction and John D’Agata’s three-part survey of the form (
The Next American Essay, The Lost Origins of the Essay, and
The Making of the American Essay), for a total of 20 books published between 1991 and 2016. I ignored all themed anthologies, as well as any limited to a specific year or publication. This is the last survey of anthologies in a series—earlier this month, I looked at the
most anthologized short stories and the
most anthologized poems—and considering all three lists together affords the ability to compare the way the different forms are canonized and read in America...."
Some great stuff here...
http://lithub.com/the-most-anthologized-essays-of-the-last-25-years/
