An essay 's usually a short piece of writing. It's often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can be literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition of an essay's 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 (for example Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism and An Es… (More on Essay)