An Exceptionally Large-Paper Copy of the Last Edition Published During Montaigne’s Lifetime

Michel de Montaigne, Essais. Cinquiesme edition, augmentée d’un troisiesme livre: et de six cens additions aux deux premiers. Paris, Abel l’Angelier, 1588.

An exceptionally broad-margined and remarkably preserved copy of the first complete edition of Montaigne’s Essais and the last edition published during the author’s lifetime, preserved in a classically elegant late eighteenth-century red morocco binding attributed to Pierre-Alexis Bradel. One of the foundational books of modern European literature and the archetype of the literary essay in its definitive Renaissance form.

Edition & Bibliographic Information

á4 A–Z4 Aa–Zz4 Xx4 AAa–ZZz4 AAAa–ZZZz4 AAAAa–LLLLLl4 = 4 leaves, 496 [recte: 504] numbered leaves. After leaf 176, misnumbered as “376,” the foliation resumes at “169.” With engraved title page, four woodcut headpieces, three larger and numerous smaller woodcut initials. Quarto (248 × ca. 183 mm).

The present copy belongs to Sayce/Maskell variant 4c with engraved title in its corrected state. Curiously, the title describes the edition as the “cinquiesme edition,” although bibliographers since Brunet have noted that only three earlier editions preceding 1588 are actually known. Sayce and Maskell suggested this may have been a deliberate publishing strategy intended to imply stronger sales success.

Physical Description & Binding

Late eighteenth-century reddish-brown morocco binding over five raised bands decorated with gilt fillets. Spine compartments with stylized floral tools and gilt title; covers framed by an elegant quadruple gilt border incorporating jewel-chain tools, dotted fillets, festoons, and dentelle ornament. Double gilt fillets to board edges and gilt dentelle turn-ins; marbled endleaves and entirely gilt edges. Binding attributed to Pierre-Alexis Bradel.

The copy is extraordinarily broad-margined. Tenschert notes that the engraved frontispiece remains entirely untrimmed, whereas even the contemporary Pottié-Sperie copy measured only 233 × 174 mm. The generous margins significantly enhance the monumental character of the quarto format introduced in 1588 to give the Essais a visibly greater physical authority than the earlier octavo editions. Condition remarkably fine throughout: minor occasional marginal restorations without text loss; a few old faded marginal annotations; binding slightly marked with small wormhole, otherwise exceptionally preserved after more than four centuries.

The First Complete Essais

The present edition marks the decisive transformation of Montaigne’s work into the form by which it entered world literature. The editions of 1580, 1582, and 1587 had appeared in smaller octavo format and contained only the first two books. In 1588 Montaigne introduced the entire third book while simultaneously adding more than six hundred additions and revisions to the earlier text. As Tenschert notes, this became “the definitive text on which all later editions are based.”

Montaigne and the Birth of the Essay

Written in the aftermath of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and the religious wars devastating France, the Essais emerged from what Montaigne himself described as a “corrupt century.” Having withdrawn from public office at the age of thirty-eight to devote himself to study in his château library, Montaigne gradually transformed reading notes, quotations, and reflections into exploratory “attempts” — essais — which slowly evolved into an entirely new literary form.

Rather than constructing systematic philosophy, Montaigne moves associatively between questions of education, death, religion, doubt, friendship, custom, and the instability of human judgment itself. His famously “jumping and skipping gait” of thought mirrored what he perceived as the restless and unfixed condition of human existence. The Essais stand at the threshold between Renaissance humanism and modern psychological self-consciousness. Although constantly in dialogue with antiquity, Montaigne refused to treat classical authors as unquestionable authorities. As Tenschert emphasizes, he sought in the ancients “rather the all-too-human than the superhuman.”

A Revolutionary Vernacular Philosophy

One of the most radical aspects of the Essais lies in language itself. Although Montaigne mastered Latin almost as a native language, he chose to write nearly entirely in French. Tenschert describes this as a linguistic event of the highest importance: within Romance philosophical literature, Montaigne became the first major thinker to express an original philosophical worldview entirely in the vernacular.

The decision was inseparable from his philosophy. Montaigne rejected both scholastic dialectics and empty rhetorical formalism in favour of a living language capable of expressing uncertainty, movement, contradiction, and concrete human experience. His prose remains astonishingly fresh precisely because it clings so closely to lived life itself.

Four Centuries of Influence

The influence of the Essais has remained continuous across four centuries. Bacon, Descartes, and Newton wrestled with Montaigne’s scepticism; Pascal and the Jansenists reacted critically against him; Enlightenment thinkers embraced him as a precursor and ally. Later generations found echoes of Montaigne in Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Sainte-Beuve, Balzac, Proust, Valéry, Karl Kraus, and Walter Benjamin. As Hugo Friedrich observed, Montaigne’s wisdom “was not acquired through knowledge, and therefore cannot be surpassed through the progress of knowledge.”

Provenance

Later eighteenth-century French ownership, likely responsible for commissioning the Bradel binding during the Revolutionary period. With old faded marginal annotations throughout.

Literature

Not in Adams; BM STC French 317; Brunet III, 1835f.; Cioranesco 15282; Davies, Fairfax Murray French, no. 677; Ebert 14270; Graesse IV, 579; Lonchamp, Français II, 330; PMM 95 (first edition); Rahir 548; Sayce/Maskell no. 4c; Tchemerzine VIII, 405; Ziegenfuß/Jung II, 169. For the binding: cf. Barber, W. Cat. 194.

For a fuller scholarly description and illustrations, see Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, lot 97: Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, Volume II