Abstract
In Proust's youth, the term essayist was not commonplace. This English neologism was slow to establish itself in France in the 19th century. Criticism of the essay genre dates back to 1842, when, in the third preface to De l'amour, Stendhal presents the book as " essai " and " physiologie " respectively. The same year, Gautier published a column on the painter William Hogarth, who was too moralistic for his taste. He criticized his utilitarian conception of the work of art, which always illustrated a thesis : in his eyes, Hogarth was more a " essayist ", a " writer on morals " than a talented painter. To find older occurrences of this " mot emprunté aux anglais ", which does not yet appear in French dictionaries, we need to examine magazines from across the Channel. As early as 1830, La Revue britannique referred to " auteurs d'essais périodiques ", at the top of which was Macaulay, poet, historian, politician and author of several essays. It is to him that La Revue des Deux Mondes refers when discussing English essayists.
