Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) has been celebrated through the ages as the greatest innovator of the essay form, popularizing it as a genre that could merge the casual with the intellectual, the autobiographical with shrewd insight. Famously quoted for the remark What do I know?, he expressed his humanism in the Eassais (1580), a collection of short subjects that have influenced thought and style from Erasmus to William Hazlitt. He suffered from quinsy, a disease that deprived him of conversation and caused his death.
WORKS THAT HAVE APPEARED IN NARRATIVE:
- The Essential Montaigne, a feature, in Stories of the Week: 2018–2019