Leonard Cohen: The Essential Leonard Cohen Die Version auf 2CD in Standard- Auflage. Diese besondere Auflage wurde veröffentlicht in Europa im Verlag Columbia am 26. März 2009.

The Essential Leonard Cohen is a compilation album released in 2002 by Leonard Cohen.The album is a retrospective of Cohen's career and features songs from his first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967), to his most recent album, Ten New Songs (2001). The album was produced by Cohen's longtime collaborator Bob Johnston. The Essential Leonard Cohen has received universally positive reviews from music critics. On Metacritic, which assigns a standard rating out of 100 to reviews by mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 81, indicating "universal acclaim". William Ruhlmann of AllMusic gave the album five stars, writing that "The Essential Leonard Cohen is an excellent overview of the first 35 years of Leonard Cohen's career , drawing on all of his albums except for Live and the soundtrack to McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Cohen's voice and lyrics are as captivating as ever, and the arrangements are uniformly tasteful." The Guardian's Caroline Sullivan gave the album four stars, writing that "The Essential Leonard Cohen is a great introduction to the singer's work and includes all the classic tracks from his 1967 debut album Songs of Leonard Cohen to his more recent Ten New Songs."

Album Genres übergreifend Rock, Folk, World, & Country, Akustische Musik, Folk und Folk-Rock.