Tom Kremer – Preface – T he essay as a form is age-old, but also ageless. It may have originated in ideas of self-examination (Montaigne: ‘it is many years since I have had only myself as the object of my thoughts’) but is defined equally by its magpie capacity to inhabit any and every subject. Its occasions are manifold: scholarly, journalistic, imaginative, personal. It can be linked to a fleeting moment or written with an eye to timelesseness and universality. It can be factual, or it can float free of the evidence. The essay feels no obligation to have the last word. It can be as intricately crafted as a piece of marquetry, or it can exfoliate like a tree. This is very much in keeping with the English language, where the boundaries of word and meaning are loose, and the map of these boundaries continues to expand and change. Given a plethora of definitions, however, it is sometime useful and necessary to move in a contrary sense, to redefine the reaches of a term. The ‘essay’ has had a long and adaptive history. In attempting to restore its specifically literary lustre, there is a case for contracting its boundaries, at a time when all non-fiction tends to borrow the name of ‘essay’. ix