MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE (1533–1592) was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance, known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre.  His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiography with intellectual insight.

Montaigne bore witness to the 16th century conflicts which tore France asunder – political and civil as well as religious wars which were marked by great excesses of fanaticism and cruelty.  His massive volume of ESSAYS (French: Essais, 1580–1592) contain some of the most influential essays ever written.  At once deeply critical of his time and deeply involved in its preoccupations and its struggles, Montaigne chose to write about himself – "I am myself the matter of my book," he says in his opening address to the reader – in order to arrive at certain possible truths concerning man and the human condition, in a period of ideological strife and division when all possibility of truth seemed illusory and treacherous.

The topics spanned the entire spectrum of the profound to the trivial, covering subjects as diverse as war-horses and cannibals, poetry and politics, sex and religion, love and friendship, ecstasy and experience.  But, above all, Montaigne studied himself as a way of drawing out his own inner nature and that of men and women in general.  The Essays are among the most idiosyncratic and personal works in all literature and provide an engaging insight into a wise Renaissance mind.

Literary critic Erich Auerbach noted the remarkable modernity of thought in Montaigne: "Among all his contemporaries", he wrote in Mimesis, "he had the clearest conception of the problem of man's self-orientation; that is, the task of making oneself at home in existence without fixed points of support."  Today, Montaigne continues to be studied in all aspects of his text by great numbers of scholars and to be read by people from all corners of the earth.  In an age that may seem as violent and absurd as his own, Montaigne's refusal of intolerance and fanaticism and his lucid awareness of the human potential for destruction, coupled with his belief in the human capacity for self-assessment, honesty, and compassion, appeal as convincingly as ever to the many who find in him a guide and a friend.


The following books are in ePUB format unless otherwise noted:

* Apology for Raymond Sebond, An (Penguin, 1993).  M.A. Screech, trans.
* Complete Essays (Penguin, 2003).  M.A. Screech, trans.
* Complete Essays (Stanford, 1976).  D. Frame, trans.
* Complete Works (Delphi Classics, 2016).  Various trans.
* Complete Works (Everyman's Library, 2003).  D. Frame, trans. – PDF*
* Essays (Duke Classics, 2012).  C. Cotton, trans.
* Essays: A Selection (Penguin, 2004).  M.A. Screech, trans.
* How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing (Penguin, 2015). M.A. Screech, trans.
* On Friendship (Penguin, 2004).  M.A. Screech, trans.
* On Solitude (Penguin, 2009).  M.A. Screech, trans.
* Selected Essays (Hackett, 2012).  J. Atkinson & D. Sices, trans.
* Shakespeare's Montaigne: The Florio Translation of the Essays (NYRB, 2014).

PDF* courtesy of Mohamed5438

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