Essays

First issued in 1580 and enlarged in later editions, Montaigne's Essays are a long experiment in self-examination. In short and long chapters he takes up fear, friendship, education, cannibals, experience, and death, moving from classical quotation to the facts of his own body, household, and civil-war France. He treats his judgment as unstable and tests custom against other nations and against the limits of knowledge. The work has no plot: it is a book of trials, as the title says, in which the writer is both subject and instrument. Later essays grow more personal and more skeptical of systems.

Quarter-bound in blue gilt blocked leather with gilt pattern blocked blue cloth sides. Red cloth slipcase.