The Essay as Form

Abstract

This essay explores German sociologist Theodor Adorno’s 1958 text “The Essay as Form”, through the writings of a quintet of English
post-war architectural historians: John Summerson, Colin Rowe, Alan Colquhoun, Reyner Banham and Robin Evans. It argues that
each of these historians’ commitment to the essay form has gone largely unnoticed among any kind of appreciation of their work, and more generally that the essay, as a very particular way of communicating learned ideas in a populist way, should be resurrected as an important and accessible model for all academic writing.