edition of Essays is based on the English translation of 1685 by Charles Cotton, edited by William Carew Hazlitt in 1877, which is in the public domain.
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AN INTRODUCTION
BY PHILIPPE DESAN
Michel de Montaigne was born in 1533.
His father had high ambitions for his son and made certain he received the best education possible at the College de Guyenne in Bordeaux. The young Michel excelled at Latin and was an avid reader of the ancients. His favorite readings were Plutarch and Seneca, with a particular interest in past historians. Later, his father bought him a public charge so that Michel could enter the Parlement of Bordeaux (judicial Court of Appeal) as a young magistrate. However, political and religious tensions were so extreme in the southwest of France of the 1560s that, unable to adjust to the intricacies of local politics, Montaigne eventually abandoned his public roles.
After the death of his father in 1569, Montaigne retired as a gentleman on his seigneurie (feudal lands) with the intention of living “nobly”. His political patrons, the Foix family, arranged for him to be knighted in the highly coveted Order of Saint Michael (at the time the highest honor for a nobleman in France). This “proof” of his nobility represented quite an accomplishment for someone whose ancestors were merely rich merchants and had become bourgeois of the city of Bordeaux, thanks to the commerce of wine and salt fish.
Because of his new noble aspirations, Michel abandoned his patronymic name of Eyquem and adopted the name of the noble house – Montaigne – purchased by his grandfather, Ramon Eyquem, in 1477. He was henceforth known as “Lord Michel de Montaigne, Knight of the noble Order of St Michael, and one of the Gentlemen in Ordinary of the French King's Chamber”.
THE ESSAYS
In 1580, Montaigne published in Bordeaux a book unique in its title: Essays. A literary genre was born. In a time when most books were about great people or events, or works of academic theology or philosophy, the author tells the reader that his only desire is to show himself “familiar and private”. He denies any intention of glory for himself or benefit to his reader:
“Had my intention been to forestall and purchase the world's opinion and favor, I would surely have adorned myself more quaintly, or kept a more grave or solemn march.”
In his opening message “To the Reader”, he declares his will to paint himself “in my simple, natural, and ordinary garb, without study or artifice, for it was myself I had to paint.” He ends the note by saying, “Thus, reader, I am myself the subject of my book; it is not worth your while to take up your time longer with such a frivolous matter.”
We must take these declarations of humility with a grain of salt, and indeed they may simply have been a literary strategy for the author of a work categorized as a “novelty” by its publisher – an author who, after all, was not then famous, and who had apparently not accomplished anything worth writing about. It is telling that, after a few editions of the Essays, and after he had become much better known, Montaigne would never modify this modest-sounding Preface to the reader.
Montaigne started writing his first essays (all very short) in 1571, when he was in his late thirties. Over the next 20 years, until his death in 1592, he would rewrite and republish the Essays several times. However, it would be false to believe that Montaigne was only a writer. He had diplomatic and political aspirations, and the literary aspect of his career always came after his political and public life, at least until he became very sick (kidney stones) after 1590.
In 1581, Montaigne became mayor of Bordeaux, the fifth-largest city in France at this time. In 1582, his publisher took advantage of his new political visibility to publish a second edition of the Essays. In 1588, with his growing notoriety, Montaigne published a third edition with copious additions and even added a third book with 13 new chapters. He was now published in Paris by one of the most successful publishers and book dealers of his time: Abel L'Angelier. Until his death, Montaigne would continue adding text in the margins of his copy of this Parisian edition.
There is a habit among modern editors of the Essays to segment Montaigne's text in three layers, often signaled by A, B, and C. These correspond to three different editions (1580, 1588, and the posthumous edition of 1595). The text of the first edition (1580) represents approximately 44 percent of the complete
