Important milestones in the history of the essay

3,000 BCE: Writing is invented in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt

800 BCE: Homer (his real name) writes the Iliad and the Odyssey

500 BCE: Sophocles writes tragic plays that depress everyone, including the students who are forced to study them well into the 21st century

450 BCE: Herodotus writes the first history book which ends, like all others since that time, in 1965

400 BCE: Aristophanes writes 40 plays, but most are terrible and only eleven survived the cut

300 BCE: Aristotle becomes the first, but not the last, student of Plato to doubt his wisdom and writes about it in his famous treatise, "Why Plato is full of it."

200-100 BCE: A number of essays are written in Japan but no one notices

1572 CE: Frenchman Michel de Montaigne becomes the first writer in history to describe his writings as "essays," derived from the French infinitive essayer, meaning "How can I make a quick buck without doing any real work?"

1950 CE: American schools begin assigning essays as an "educational tool"

1959 CE: Professor Verb writes his first essay, "Why I deserve a bigger allowance" (the ice cream man had just raised his price to 6 cents for ONE Popsicle -- if you can imagine)

1963-1971 CE: American students revolt against "the System," purportedly because of the Vietnam War and Civil Rights but secretly because of all of the essays they would have to write otherwise

1997 CE: TurnItIn is established, effing it up for everyone

I bet they had essay writing services.......

Hey Bubula, can you write my paper? It's due in 3 moon cycles...

Of course Ramana.........but you pay for the clay tablets..........

Ancient Egypt had professional schools to train scribes in the military arts. Likewise, scribes were used by military staff officers in ancient Assyria for supply line support, including ensuring that troops had enough horses (you couldn't have enough horses in ancient Assyria) (Gabriel & Boose, 1994).

Indeed, by the time of Cicero (c40 BCE), "The image of the poor, struggling writer trying to make ends meet in some garret was not common. To write you were either rich to start with or you had a rich patron" (Small, 1997, p. 174). Moreover, scribes "would qualify for the modern term 'research assistants' in that they did more than a stenographer might do today. They could translate from Greek to Latin or vice versa" (p. 174). Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, ancient scribes also engaged in ghostwriting: "Plutarch relied on 'bilingual scribes' for his Roman lives, since '[w]hen his citations can be checked, they sometimes correspond so exactly with the original as to give a strong impression of first-hand knowledge.' Acknowledgement [of the scribes] was not the rule" (Small, 1997, p. 174).

Acknowledgement-schmoledgement -- as long as we get paid.
___________

References

Gabriel, R. A. & Boose, D. W. (1994). The great battles of antiquity: A strategic and tactical guide to great battles that shaped the development of war. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Small, J. P. (1997). Wax tablets of the mind: Cognitive studies of memory and literacy in classical antiquity. London: Routledge.

Well, that was a fun piece of reading. Entertaining and tongue in cheek all the way. I think I will look into the historical history of writing now. I am sure it will be more fascinating to learn about. Sometimes, I become interested in learning about other topics simply by reading the comments and threads in this forum. It's also an educational tool in some ways. I pass it on to my writers whenever I can. I am sure they will also get a laugh out of this post. After I pass it on.

I think that the emergence of AI in relation to essay writing should be given special mention as one of the important modern milestones in the history of essay writing. Finally, something worse than unskilled ESL, third rate writers emerged. It actually managed to give bad writers a good name. Hahahah!

To the extent that this topic relates to the academic essay industry, nothing has ever had a greater impact than the introduction of plagiarism scanners, starting with turnitin, in 2007. Prior to that, most of this industry consisted of the sale of pre-written essays, with original custom-written essays representing only a small fraction of the business. Plagiarism scanners made pre-written essays unusable, virtually overnight, and were directly responsible for the explosion of demand for original custom-written essays. That demand also made it possible for good writers to earn the equivalent of a decent full-time salary doing this, working from home instead of having to commute to an office, long before remote work was even a thing.