Michel de Montaigne - Selected Essays (The Franklin Library)

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. 1982. The Franklin Library.

Twenty-Nine Essays selected and introduced by Mortimer J. Alder. Translation by Donalad M. Frame and Illustrations by Carol Wald.

Leather bound with gilt decorations. Interior clean and crisp. Small tear on frontispiece, else in very fine condition. Beautifully illustrated.

To overcome a crisis of melancholy after the death of his father, Montaigne withdrew to his country estates and began to write, and in the highly original essays that resulted he discussed themes such as fathers and children, conscience and cowardice, coaches and cannibals, and, above all, himself. On Some Lines of Virgil opens out into a frank discussion of sexuality and makes a revolutionary case for the equality of the sexes. Other essays touch on issues of an age struggling with religious and intellectual strife, with France torn apart by civil war. These diverse subjects are united by Montaigne's distinctive voice - that of a tolerant man, sceptical, humane, often humorous and utterly honest in his pursuit of the truth