Bordeaux Copy: Montaigne’s Essays annotated (1588-1592) by the author

The Bordeaux Copy is a copy of the 1588 edition of Montaigne’s Essays covered with annotations in the author’s own hand. Today, it is the only surviving autograph manuscript of this seminal text and our sole insight into Montaigne at work. Together with Cervantes and Shakespeare, Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) is one of the greatest writers of early modern Europe. In the humanist tradition, Montaigne inaugurated a new era in the history of ideas, calling into question the Eurocentric view of the world. He developed a new philosophy of nature responsive to the crises of his time (division within Christianity, annihilation of Amerindian peoples through brutal conquest, rise of the Ottoman Empire). He evolved a way of thinking in which self-examination came to be seen as characteristic of man, laying the foundations of our modern society.