Few things beyond the bowl of frogspawn on the nature table held my attention in primary school (and it got worse in secondary), but there was one class I did enjoy.

Every week we'd be set a subject for an essay. Our teacher would chalk up the title on the board and off we'd go, hares and tortoises alike scribbling our way to the finishing line. The topics were banal, but that was part of the fun. It's probably the dreariness of the ideas we were set - my holiday, the weekend, the life of a postage stamp etc - that is to blame for a generation with overheated imaginations in the Dunbar area.

For those of us who liked writing, the essay was an exercise in description, lightly garnished with fact. At no point did it occur to me to enquire about the history of the essay. When, in later years, we were introduced to Joseph Addison and his delightful ruminations on life, an inkling that this was one of the great literary forms must have crossed our minds, but for the most part Addison was such a pleasure to read, the nuances of what the essay could do, or was supposed to achieve, flew right over our heads.

Essays are flooding the flat this month, thanks to my in-house book buyer, whose latest purchase arrived the other day. The Best American Essays, 2014, is a treat, as are the others in this never disappointing series. The comfort of having a collection of work by the likes of Dave Eggers, James Wood and Zadie Smith is enough to make insomnia welcome. No sooner had this arrived, however, than another collection appeared. Portrait Inside My Head, by American essayist Phillip Lopate (Notting Hill Editions, £8.99) is a highly personal collection, first published in America. Notting Hill Editions champions the essay, and has just launched its second essay competition (first prize, £20,000; for details go to www.nottinghilleditions.com). Even if you don't want to enter, their website offers an online library of 100 essays, modern and ancient, for your enjoyment.

Lopate is a man after my own heart. In his introduction, he explains why writing essays appeals so strongly to him. "I am not a perfectionist, neither by temperament nor prose style. I am drawn to the shagginess of the essay, its discontinuous forms of consciousness..."

The idea of imperfection was present in essays from the very first - at least, if you are to believe certain literary historians. The introduction to the 2014 Best American essays was written by John Jeremiah Sullivan (author of Pulphead), and makes a startling suggestion. Although it is always claimed that Montaigne is the father of the essay, and its first practitioner, Sullivan offers evidence that another candidate for the role is James VI and I. In 1584 the king published a collection of poems and a long prose piece setting out some rules and pitfalls to be observed and avoided in Scots poetry. Its title was Essayes of a Prentise (Apprentice). That this overlapped with Montaigne writing the first of his many volumes of essays suggests synchronicity. But that both men had been taught by the brilliant poet George Buchanan indicates something altogether less fey, and makes the idea of James deliberately writing in this untried form no mere coincidence or fluke.

The argument is complex but compelling. Much as I loathe James's persecution of witches, he already has earned his place in literary fame for commissioning the lyrical King James Version of the bible. Now, it seems, he could also fairly lay claim to be the earliest of essayists in English, preceding Francis Bacon. Although Montaigne's role in promoting the essay cannot be denied, it seems James played a notable and overlooked part in introducing it here. So well did it suit the English-speaking mind that, as Sullivan writes, by the 18th century "England becomes a nation of essayists every bit as much as it was ever one of shopkeepers". One hopes those days will return.