For other uses, see Essay (disambiguation).
An essay is a short work of writing that treats a topic from an author's personal point of view. Essays are non-fictional but often subjective; while expository, they can also include narrative. Essays can be learned arguments, literary criticism, political manifestos, observations of daily life, recollections and reflections of the author.
The definition of an essay is vague, overlapping with those of an article and a short story. Almost all modern essays are written in prose, but works in verse have been dubbed essays (Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism and An Essay on Man). While today an essay is partly defined by its brevity, voluminous works like John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Thomas Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population refer to themselves using the term.