Michel de montaigne

As disease and war ravaged the nation, he left town and invented the essay.

Montaigne’s essays chart the course of twenty years of self-investigation, Jane Kramer writes.

The essay is French, but essayists are English. What can it mean?

A familiar essay is a short prose composition characterized by the personal quality of the writing and the distinctive persona of the essayist.

Montaigne invented the essay genre after deciding he wanted to write a literary self-portrait of himself. This turned out to be an impossible task.

We report, you decide.

"The surest sign of wisdom is constant cheerfulness." ~ Michel de Montaigne

What do we really know about the philosopher who invented liberalism?

Is it a good thing for a novel to stimulate our emotions? Montaigne, Brecht and others thought not.