The phrase "essential writings" is correct and usable in written English.
For example, you could use this phrase in a sentence like this: "This collection of ancient essential writings is invaluable to scholars of early religion."
"Crises of leadership are the order of the day at the beginning of the twenty-first century," Elizabeth Samet writes, in the introduction to "Leadership: Essential Writings by Our Greatest Thinkers" (Norton).
Even in the compilation of his "essential writings" assembled by a brother Jesuit, there is no inclusion of the searing writing about his AIDS work.
Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson (eds)., A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, rev.
The writer teaches at Williams College and is the editor of "Something That Will Surprise the World: The Essential Writings of the Founding Fathers".
"The Prince," Machiavelli's how-to guide for sovereigns, turned out to be "a scandal that Western political thought and practice has been gazing at in horror and in fascination since its first publication," to quote from Albert Russell Ascoli's introduction to Peter Constantine's new translation (Modern Library; $8; also included in "The Essential Writings of Machiavelli").
This exceptional document — published for the first time in English, as "A Caution to the Medici," in "The Essential Writings of Machiavelli" (edited and translated by Peter Constantine; Modern Library; $17.95) — presents an argument against the Medici faction's continued blackening of Soderini's name.
-Jon M. Sweeney compiled Phyllis Tickle: Essential Spiritual Writings (Orbis), and is currently writing Phyllis Tickle, her biography, to be published in 2017.
THE ESSENTIAL GROUCHO Writings by, for, and About Groucho Marx.
His best ad-libs from "You Bet Your Life," collected by Stefan Kanfer in "The Essential Groucho: Writings by, for, and About Groucho Marx" (Vintage, 2000), are amusing but, I suspect, not as funny as they were in the moment.
A stylus seems essential, and hand-writing recognition a bonus.
Although likely the result of the unique problems the author faced in presenting his views as a 6th-century-bce prophet to a 2nd-century-bce audience, other characteristics of The Book of Daniel, especially its pseudonymous authorship and emphasis on esoteric truths, remain essential components of apocalyptic writings.
