Hackett Publishing

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"This new edition of Montaigne's most important essays is a superb achievement, one that successfully brings together in accessible form the work of two major writers of Renaissance France. The translation by James B. Atkinson and David Sices is accurate, clear, readable, and conveys Montaigne's personable style elegantly to modern readers of English. The notes are authoritative and learned, but never intrusive, and the Introduction beautifully places Montaigne's work in context. No less impressive is the inclusion of an elegant English version of La Boétie's Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, which is both a key to understanding much of Montaigne and a major piece of early modern political thought. This is now the default version of Montaigne in English."
     —Timothy Hampton, Professor of French and Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley

"This inspired translation captures Montaigne's desire for his ideas 'to rise up and fill the imagination of the listener to the point where he has no recollection of the words.' Atkinson and Sices have that rare ability to dive beneath the distracting surface of French to discover its virtuoso capacity to express rather than tell. They manage to give us Montaigne on his own terms—even, paradoxically, in his own 'language,' everyday speech: 'simple and natural, the same on paper as in the mouth.' With unswerving allegiance to Montaigne—as opposed to Montaigne scholarship—they present the essays with everything one needs to understand them without obtruding their own considerable erudition. The choice of essays aims to convey Montaigne's style, argument, and thought, while accepting incompleteness: 'I do not see the whole of everything.' In every page—beginning with Atkinson's brilliant Introduction—this magical Montaigne betrays a lifetime of meditation on its subject . . . a journey that began, we learn, in the very tower where the Essais were composed."  
     —Stephen G. Nichols, James M. Beall Professor Emeritus of French and Humanities, Johns Hopkins University


James B. Atkinson is an independent scholar. David Sices is Professor Emeritus of French and Italian, Dartmouth College. Their edited translation The Comedies of Machiavelli is published by Hackett.

Translators’ Preface
Introduction
  Two Thinkers for Our Time
  Montaigne and His Time
  Montaigne the Essayist
  Étienne de La Boétie and His Time
  Montaigne and La Boétie
  Montaigne, La Boétie, and the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude
  La Boétie and the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude
  Saying No to a Friend

Michel de Montaigne, Selected Essays

To the Reader

BOOK I
  1. By Differing Means We Attain the Same End
  8. Idleness
  20 [19]. Through Philosophy We Learn How to Die
  21 [20]. The Power of the Imagination
  26 [25]. The Education of Children
  28 [27]. Friendship
  31 [30]. The Cannibals
  39 [38]. Solitude
  50. Democritus and Heraclitus

BOOK II
  6. Practice
  11. Cruelty
  17. Being Presumptuous
  18. Correcting
  28. To Every Thing There Is a Season
  30. A Malformed Child

BOOK III
  2. Repenting
  12. Physiognomy
  13. Experience

Étienne de La Boétie, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude

Endnotes
Index