When Michel de Montaigne retired to his family estate in 1572, aged 38, he tells us that he wanted to write his famous Essays as a distraction for his idle mind. He neither wanted nor expected people ...

In his own lifetime, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman than as an author. The tendency in his essays to digress into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as detrimental to proper style ...

The word essay derives from the title of a 1580 collection of writings by the Frenchman Michel de Montaigne. In his Essays, Montaigne set down his thoughts on whatever subject snared his ...

Michel de Montaigne and Samuel Johnson are two of the greatest essayists who ever lived. They tackled similar problems and were fascinated by some of the same perplexities, but they represent ...

“The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.” Michel de Montaigne I ...

When I became a dedicated reader of the 16th-century French writer Montaigne, in 2005, I was new to writing and relatively new to motherhood, with a 3-year-old and a newborn, and about to publish my ...

Michel de Montaigne was one of the most influential figures of the Renaissance, singlehandedly responsible for popularising the essay as a literary form. In 1572, Montaigne retired to his estates in ...