Book 1

Essays of Montaigne

by Michel Montaigne

Published 1 February 2002
The Essays of Montaigne: Complete, by Michel de Montaigne, Translated by Charles Cotton; Edited by William Carew Hazlitt, first published in 1877. He became famous for his effortless ability to merge serious intellectual speculation with casual anecdotes and autobiography-and his massive volume Essais contains, to this day, some of the most widely influential essays ever written. Montaigne had a direct influence on writers the world over, including Rene Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stefan Zweig, Eric Hoffer, Isaac Asimov, and possibly on the later works of William Shakespeare. His Essays, form a magazine of which such minds did not disdain. This complete version and publication is intended to supply a recognised deficiency in our literature-a library edition of the Essays of Montaigne. This great French writer deserves to be regarded as a classic, not only in the land of his birth, but in all countries and in all literatures.

Book 1


Book 2