Ask HN: Who are your favorite essayists?

I don't have favourites I just go up on gutenberg and look for collections. This way I get to read essays from authors whom I hadn't read before.

For example couple of months back I found 'all things considered' [1] a collection of selected essays by GK Chesterton. While the entire collection is good my favourites were in no particular order:-

1. On running afters ones hat

2. The fallacy of success

3. The worship of the wealthy

These days I am reading Oxford book of American Essays[2]. I liked Benjamin Franklin's essays (The whistle was also in his autobiography). Consolation for the old bachelor (Francis Hopkinson) is very funny. Calvin a study of character (Charles Dudley Warner) is the strangest thing I have read in recent time, it is good though.

[1]http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11505

[2]http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40196/40196-h/40196-h.htm

I am not sure what you consider an essay versus a blogger. I am a big fan of Andrew Chen's essays. I love how through he is. He does not gloss over critical points/how to's like many marketing writers do.

Link to his site: http://andrewchen.co/

Noam Chomsky Emma Goldman Tolstoy

Alan Kay

Kenneth Clark, art historian

John Ruskin, art and social historian

Slavoj Zizek, Marxist/Lacanian philosopher

lewis thomas. combined solid science and excellent writing.

Chuck Klosterman