Genres
Nonfiction Prose
Also Known As Literary Nonfiction
Citation Formats
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Prose written to describe, argue, reflect on or report the actual world rather than to narrate invented events, spanning forms from the personal essay and memoir to travel writing, criticism, oratory and correspondence collected and read as literature. The genre's boundary with fiction is a matter of the writer's claim about the world rather than of style: nonfiction prose can be as formally inventive, as digressive or as image driven as any novel, and the epistolary form crosses the boundary in both directions, since a real letter collection and a novel written as invented letters share a form while making opposite claims about what actually happened.
Facts
Notable ExampleMichel de Montaigne, Essais (1580), the first work to describe itself as essays 1 Defining TraitWriting that attempts, in good faith, to convey information about the real world rather than being grounded in imagination. 2 Cross-Tradition Connections
Encompasses Form
Features Author
Biographia Literaria already in-genre Nonfiction Prose; Coleridge himself carried no in-genre edge to it.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Essay
Wikimedia FoundationLead sectionQuote, Lead section
The Frenchman Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) was the first author to describe his work as essays
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.s.v. NonfictionQuote, s.v. Nonfiction
Any document or media content that attempts, in good faith, to convey information only about the real world, rather than being grounded in imagination.
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.Encompasses Form: The Essay, s.v. EssayView the Source 2. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.Encompasses Form: The Epistolary Form, s.v. Epistolary NovelView the Source 2. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.Features Author: Biographia LiterariaView the Source 2. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.Features Author: Thomas CarlyleView the Source The Norton Anthology of World Literature
W. W. Norton & CompanyNonfiction Prose entry
Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History (1837)
Thomas Carlyle, 1837Features Author: The French Revolution: A History
Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841)
Thomas Carlyle, 1841Features Author: On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History
Simone de Beauvoir (Britannica)
Features Author: Simone de Beauvoir
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words (1963)
Features Author: The Words
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
Features Author: The Myth of Sisyphus
Jean-Paul Sartre (Britannica)
BritannicaFeatures Author: Jean-Paul Sartre
Albert Camus (Britannica)
BritannicaFeatures Author: Albert Camus
Andre Breton (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)Features Author: Andre Breton, Opening paragraph, Surrealist ManifestoQuote, Features Author: Andre Breton, Opening paragraph, Surrealist Manifesto
His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto (Manifeste du surrealisme) of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism".
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)Features Author: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Futurism section, Futurist ManifestoQuote, Features Author: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Futurism section, Futurist Manifesto
Marinetti is known best as the author of the Futurist Manifesto, which he wrote in 1909.
Wikipedia: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)Features Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Opening section, major prose workQuote, Features Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Opening section, major prose work
Coleridge wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria.
Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationFeatures Author: Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Lead section, essay originQuote, Features Author: Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Lead section, essay origin
first published as an essay titled The Great Lawsuit in the Transcendentalist magazine The Dial in July 1843, then substantially expanded and republished in book form under its current title in 1845
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