Francis Bacon Publishes Essays

1597

The English lawyer and philosopher Francis Bacon published the first edition of his Essays, terse aphoristic meditations on honor, truth, studies, and death. Bacon styled them counsels civil and moral. Readers loved their economy and would love them more as he expanded the book in successive editions. The terse, aphoristic style established a distinctively English tradition of moral reflection influencing writers from Johnson to Emerson.