Author Description

Montaigne scholar Donald M. Frame explores the development of Montaigne's special brand of humanism and the origins of his art. He spent the last twenty years of his life in an intense examination and discovery of himself. In the process he compiled a brilliant book of essays (indeed, he invented the word) on himself, the world, and man's place in it. Mr. Frame's lucid biography traces Montaigne's childhood, education, work, marriage, travels, and death in sixteenth-century France. He examines Montaigne's deep friendship with a man whose untimely death deprived him of his closest friend and pushed him into the essays as a substitute for conversations no longer available.