Are "personal essays" written much in the UK?

[Medea]

You know, like that essay Ayelet Waldman wrote about loving her husband more than her children, the one that made everyone parp their heads off.

I guess they're quite common in the US; just as memoirs are quite popular. Lots of self-centred writing over there, I guess!

Anyway I'm teaching that topic today and suddenly wondered if it's a genre people here are familiar with. I suppose people are always writing columns in the Guardian and so forth that draw on their personal experience, but would that be callled a "personal essay" here?

TIA.
ps I accidentally posted this question under an incomplete subject line, so I'm posting again.

Sorry my computer is going crazy, and has gone and posted this thread twice. Sorry!

Who are they meant to be for?

I guess "lifestyle columns" are the closest British mass-media version of what you mean.

But there are "diary pieces" in various other media of lesser mass - such as the London Review of Books (which actually does lots of longer personal essays, too, like Jenni Diski's Skating to Antarctica, bits of which were first published there).

Hey, if you're not already a LRB subscriber I've got a free annual subscription to give away. Want it?

And that would be Jenny Diski.

Yes yes yes PLEASE bink! I'd meant to start subscribing, but hadn't got round to it. Thanks for the answer, too.

Tinker, I guess they're aimed towards all sorts of readers, really. I guess like "lifestyle columns". . .people who like to read lifestyle type pieces. Sometimes they can be quite serious, and sometimes v. fluffy.

I like the essay very much as a writing style. Joan Didion, for example - awesome proponent of the genre.

OK - very happy to give you it. I've been subscribing for [cough] more than 20 years so am running out of people to pass it on to (as the recipient has to be someone not already on their database).

Can you CAT me your name/address & I will organise? Let me know if there is any problem doing that, as my last MN subscription was a while ago.

Oh, no, Bink, I've already been a recipient once before. Does that exclude me as possibility? It was ages ago.

But isn't a "personal essay" just another name for an article or a column? Brian Viner does a particularly unfunny one in teh Indie.

There was an utterly marvellous one (LRB again) by a medical student, I recall. Are you teaching the topic from a how-to point of view, or as critic?

I will have a look at the subscription offer letter & see what it says. Will let you know.

Medea, it says I can give the subscription to "anyone who is not already an LRB subscriber and hasn't already been given a free subscription in the past". So if you had a paid subscription before you can have my free one now; but if the one you had before was a free one from someone else, you can't have mine.

Let me know!

Hi Bink -

How are you? Can I butt in here (in the most polite way, of course!), and say I'd love to be the recipient if Medea isn't eligible?

Bink I've CAT'd you with clarification. Thanks again for the offer.

Medea, my e-mail system is being very strange, and you've either got multiple replies from me, or none. Apologies either way.

Anyway, I'll do what you suggest & send the letter to the LRB this weekend - they'll then write to confirm you really want it, then when you confirm it'll start.

Earlybird, you are top of my list for next year, I promise!!

medea, what about the rise of the 'blog'??

think they're also a US thing primarily, but also being used increasingly in the uk?