With the exception of the History of the Modern Drama (1909), Lukács’ earliest work is self-consciously essayistic in form. As Lukács explains in “On the Nature and Form of the Essay” (1911a), this is because the essay is the primary form of writing which addresses life through the medium of form (1911a: 8) and which takes form (in particular, the form of a work of art) seriously as a reality of its own. Essayistic writing, however, is not only writing about form; it also must always examine the conditions under which life can be given a form in the first place. This problem becomes virulent in modernity where the form of life is no longer something unproblematically present. Rather, the existing ways in which life could give itself a form have become problematic and are experienced as abstractions.