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Since its beginnings with Montaigne in the sixteenth century, the essay has evolved from what Samuel Johnson called ‘an irregular or undigested piece’ into a form now defined (Webster's 3rd New International Dictionary) as ‘an analytic, interpretive or critical literary composition … usually dealing with a subject from a limited and often personal point of view’.
Typically using the essay, from multiple authors, as its compositional unit, the ‘festschrift’ requires intricate editorial balance. It is inherently a labour of love, the editors and contributors having a special personal or intellectual connection to the honoured subject. In this book, in honour of Martin S. Bergmann, an adoring preface, family pictures and a testimonial poem are followed by twenty-one essays, the authors often making clear their longstanding and devoted relationship to the man and his ideas. Indeed the tributes recalled—reminiscent of Bergmann's own film appearance—the question at the end of the film The Pelican Brief: might the absent, reclusive heroine be fictitious, as she ‘sounds too good to be true?’—and the answer ‘she almost is’.