On Solitude and Other Essays

Montaigne retired from public life in 1571, locked himself in his tower, and began to write. What he wrote — the Essays — was the first attempt in the history of literature to take a single human being’s inner life seriously enough to make it the subject of a sustained literary project. These shorter pieces, selected by M.A. Screech and including the famous essay on solitude, are the perfect introduction to a mind that has rarely been equalled for its combination of intelligence, honesty, and warmth.

Montaigne on solitude: not loneliness, but the art of keeping your own company well enough that you do not need the world’s approval to know your own worth. Montaigne on experience: not abstract wisdom but the particular texture of a particular life, attended to with complete and patient honesty. Montaigne on death: not fear, not resignation, but curiosity — and the gradual cultivation of the equanimity that only comes from thinking seriously about the thing we cannot avoid.

One of the great humanists. An ideal introduction to the inventor of the essay — and to a way of thinking that remains completely fresh five hundred years later. Published by Penguin.