Essays

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Overview

The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, first published in 1580 and expanded until his death in 1592, are a collection of short, wandering prose pieces in which a French nobleman examines himself and the world. He invented the essay as a literary form: a personal attempt to think through a question honestly. His motto, often given as What do I know, expresses a humane scepticism that still reads as fresh and direct.

Context

Montaigne lived through the French Wars of Religion, in which Catholics and Protestants fought for decades. He retired from public life in 1571 to his estate near Bordeaux and began writing in his tower library. He later served as mayor of Bordeaux. The recovery of classical writers, including Seneca, Plutarch and the sceptic Sextus Empiricus, shaped his thinking.