Montaigne's Essays

First issued from 1580, with later expansions through 1588 and after, this book is a sequence of informal essays in which Michel de Montaigne examines himself as a sample of human nature. He writes from his tower library in Gascony on death, friendship, education, cannibals, coaches, experience, and the limits of reason, mixing quotation from the ancients with private anecdote. The essays grow longer and more sceptical; the late pieces treat the body, custom, and how to live without a finished system. There is no continuous narrative. The work is a philosophical self-portrait in prose chapters, not a treatise arranged as a single argument.

Frontispiece to Vol. Blue cloth spines with gilt title and decorations, marbled boards. Blue three-volume slipcase, titled in gold.