From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishessayistes‧say‧ist /ˈeseɪ-ɪst/ noun [countable] ALBOsomeone who writes essays giving their ideas about politics, society etc
Examples from the Corpus
essayist• William Cobbett, the nineteenth-century essayist, perhaps has done more than anyone to influence our feelings about the rural.• The esteemed poet and ecological essayist has lived here with his family for 25 years.• Numbers of novelists, poets, essayists and artists had early work printed by provincial presses.• The prodigious essayist was pushing deadline on a script for a movie that actor Bill Murray may do.• Cyberspace, says essayist and lyricist John Perry Barlow, is where conversations are conducted when two people talk on the telephone.• William Hazlitt, the essayist, grew up here.• The essayist and physician Havelock Ellis once suggested that thieves might be recognised by their low-lying ears and small heads. 