Lot 595
  • 595

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de [John Florio, trans.]

Estimate
3,000 - 5,000 USD
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Description

  • Essayes Written in French. London: Printed by Melch[ior] Bradwood for Edward Blount and William Barret, 1613
  • paper
Small folio (11 x 7 in.; 280 x 178 mm). Woodcut headpiece on title, engraved portrait of the translator on a plate facing the text, woodcut head-, tailpieces, and decorative initials, with final blank leaf; some side-notes shaved near the end. Contemporary blind-ruled calf; rebacked with original spine laid down, some scrapes and scuffmarks.

Provenance

John Aston (signature on title) — Allerton C. Hickmott (pencil note on front flyleaf).  Acquisition: Seven Gables, 1963

Literature

STC 18042; ESTC S111840; see Pforzheimer 378 (citing first edition)

Condition

some side-notes shaved near the end. Contemporary blind-ruled calf; rebacked with original spine laid down, some scrapes and scuffmarks.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Catalogue Note

Second edition. “For Shakespeare — and not for Shakespeare alone but for virtually all of his English contemporaries — Montaigne was Florio’s Montaigne. His essays, in their rich Elizabethan idiom and wildly inventive turns of phrase, constitute the way Montaigne spoke to Renaissance England” (Stephen Greenblatt in The Telegraph, 7 June 2014).