The idea for this book developed around an April 2019 conference about the essay at the University of Malta. As editors, we wanted The Edinburgh Companion to the Essay to be a highly collaborative project and to offer a space of discussion for writers and scholars with distinctive interests and sensibilities around the essay. We wanted to provide readers with a sense of the heterogeneity of the essay, and we believe that the thirty-five contributors to this volume, individually and collectively, explore the various facets of the form and, especially, its contemporary significance.

At over 250,000 words, this volume was completed through the work and dedication of many people over a period of around three years. We would like to thank the contributors to this volume for their professionalism and for their willingness to work within the collaborative and rigorous dynamics we established for the book.

We are also grateful to our commissioning editor, Jackie Jones, and the team at Edinburgh University Press (Susannah Butler, Fiona Conn and Bekah Dey). Their guidance and support throughout the whole process was fundamental to the conception and completion of this project.

Thanks are also due to the University of Malta for granting Mario Aquilina a one semester sabbatical in 2021 as well as funds for the compilation of the index, to St. Lawrence University for granting Bob Cowser Jr a one semester sabbatical in 2020 and additional leave in 2021, and to Columbia University for providing Nicole B. Wallack with funding to support the manuscript’s preparation.

Nicholas Patrick Osborne, Anirbaan Banerjee and Eliza Wright were instrumental in helping the editors proofread and copyedit the manuscript, while Marie Louise Kold kindly provided an image of her art for the cover of the book.