BAUMAN RARE BOOKS 6 02MONTAIGNE. Essayes Written In French… Done Into English, according to the last French edition, by John Florio. London, 1613. Folio (8 by 11-1/2 inches), contemporary full brown calf rebacked and recornered. $16,000 “The Unfolding Of A Mind Of Genius In Dialogue With Itself” Second edition in English of Montaigne’s seminal masterpiece, with the important Elizabethan translation of John Florio used by Shakespeare as a source for The Tempest (circa 1611). “Montaigne devised the essay form in which to express his personal convictions and private meditations, a form in which he can hardly be said to have been anticipated… He finds a place in the present canon, however, chiefly for his consummate representation of the enlightened skepticism of the 16th century, to which Bacon, Descartes and Newton were to provide the answers in the next” (PMM 95). Here is “the unfolding of a mind of genius in dialogue with itself and with the world” (Hollier, 250). “It is generally accepted that Shakespeare used Florio’s translation when writing the passage on the natural commonwealth in his Tempest” (Pforzheimer 378). Initially published in French in 1580, Montaigne’s Essayes were first published in English in 1603, with this translation. Title page with contemporary owner signature. Interior quite fresh with only minor expert archival repair to edges of title page and and a few leaves not affecting text, lightest scattered foxing, faint rubbing to boards. A very handsome near-fine copy.
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