Les Essais de Michel Seigneur de Montaigne. Edition nouvelle. 1595

In-folio of (12) ff., 523 and 231 pp., (1) p.

Full tawny calf, blind-tooled fillet bordering the covers, gilt-stamped coat of arms at center, raised bands richly decorated, red morocco title label, double gilt fillet on edges, gilt decorative roll on inner dentelles, gilt edges over marbling, usual restorations to headcaps and joints.

Contemporary binding attributed to Boyet, bearing the arms of the Count of Hoym.

327 x 208 mm.

Montaigne, Michel de. The Essays of Michel Seigneur de Montaigne. New edition, discovered after the Author’s death, reviewed & enlarged by him by a third more than previous printings.

Paris, Abel l’Angelier, 1595. With privilege.

First edition, largely original, which establishes the definitive text of Montaigne’s Essays.

It contains numerous autograph corrections in ink by Mademoiselle de Gournay.

“First edition published by Mlle de Gournay, based on Montaigne's manuscripts. It is increased by a third and contains an apologetic preface that Mlle de Gournay did not reproduce in subsequent editions until 1617. It sets the definitive text of the Essays” (Tchémerzine IV, 876).

The first original, published in 1580, contained only the first two books; the third appeared in the 1588 edition.

Montaigne died on September 13, 1592. He left behind the famous annotated copy of the 1588 edition, preserved at the Bordeaux Municipal Library since the Revolution, and his spiritual heir: Marie Le Jars de Gournay (1565-1645), whom he had met as a young girl between February and October 1588. The task of preparing a new edition fell to her and the Bordeaux poet Pierre de Brach.

The preface to the 1595 edition conferred on Marie de Gournay the now-famous title of “adoptive daughter,” echoing a passage added to Book II of the Essays in this same edition. It is she who bequeathed Montaigne to seventeenth-century culture and established the text for posterity, though she reserved the right to reshape it in future editions. She ensured the quality of the editions and their dissemination throughout Europe. She continually defended the author's reputation, whom certain Jansenists, while admiring him, quickly classified among the atheists.

In 1594, a new edition of the Essays was thus undertaken by the bookseller Abel L’Angelier, who, in 1588, had already published the last edition made during Montaigne’s lifetime. He very likely had at his disposal the “exemplar”—that is, a copy (now lost) of the 1588 edition that incorporates and compiles the additions and corrections from the famous “Bordeaux Copy” and is largely completed by Montaigne himself in preparation for a new edition. These are “startling, even disturbing, revisions, but which, as evidenced by the material object that is the Bordeaux Copy, are products of Montaigne’s writing in the last years of his life. They are integral parts of the Essays’ text...” (Mary B. McKinley, 2001)

“This monumental 1595 edition is the first complete edition to provide the final form Montaigne wished for his text and is increased by 1,409 major additions” (D. Pottiée-Sperry).

The publication was made under the supervision of Mlle de Gournay, who, in her own words, brought “extreme scrupulousness” to it. The difficulties of this great production, which lasted more than six months, are attested by the many press corrections noted, the remaining errors listed in the errata (which appeared in two successive states), and by the corrections made by Mlle de Gournay in two phases on numerous printed leaves.

Copy presenting two first-issue features: First state before the cancel of pages 63 and 64, and first state of the fourth line of page 70 of the first book: “Que une” corrected in the second state to “qu’une”.

Rarity of copies preserved in their original period binding with provenance:

The edition met with such success that it was quickly sold out, and most nineteenth-century bibliophiles—first golden age of book collecting—had their copies rebound by the great contemporary binders: Trautz-Bauzonnet and company.

Copies in period binding are consequently rare; those preserved in original provenance bindings are extremely rare. “Jules Le Petit” thus describes 9 copies rebound in the nineteenth century, but only 1 in original armorial binding—this one, “with the arms of the Count d’Hoym”!

“Tchemerzine,” for his part, lists 5 copies bound in nineteenth-century morocco: “L. de Montgermont, 1876, mar. Trautz, 1010 frs – Loviot, mar. Trautz, 2,900 frs – Meilhac, mar. Chambolle, 3,500 frs – Moura, mar. Trautz, 5,100 frs – De Backer, mar. Cuzin, 5,900 frs; 3 in period binding: ‘Lignerolles’; ‘Delafosse,’ old vellum, 2,550 F OR; and ‘Montesquieu,’ old sheepskin, 6,100 F; but only 1 in old provenance binding, the present copy “old calf, copy of Count d’Hoym, 14,500 F.”

“Charles-Henri, Count d’Hoym, plenipotentiary minister of Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, at the French court, was one of the most famous bibliophiles, who passionately assembled from 1717 to 1735 a collection especially rich in literature and history, unequaled since for the number, selection, and binding of the volumes it contained; many came from the most renowned collectors: Colbert, Cisternay du Fay, and others. The books he had bound were covered by Boyet in fawn calf or morocco with his arms on the boards and the Polish eagle on the spine.” (Olivier, pl. 672).

“It is said that Abbé Rothelin inspired his taste for books; and in that respect, it must be admitted the pupil was worthy of the master. From 1717 to 1735, for eighteen consecutive years, he attended auctions and secured everything rarest, finest, and most precious. He skimmed that of Cisternay du Fay in 1725 and that of Colbert in 1728. His collection, at that period, was so famous that Lenglet Dufresnoy, in the dedication to Clément Marot, told him: ‘Whatever poets are in this Collection, it will be glorious for them, My Lord, to have entered the Library of Your Excellency. Such a magnificent, numerous, and well-chosen library, it could rightly be considered a marvel of literature.’ He had, indeed, gathered the most beautiful books in both form and content.

Boyet was his binder. At the Brunet sale in May 1868, books with this mark fetched very high prices” (Guigard p. 260).

Remarkable copy, one of the rare ones from the 1595 edition, also presenting Montaigne's preface: “C est icy un livre de bonne foy…”

Provenance: From the libraries of Count d’Hoym: 4 livres 4 sols; Doublat de Sommeiller with ex-libris; Giraud: 230 F in 1855; Solar: 305 F in 1863; Malaussena: 14,500 F; Henri Burton (New York Sotheby’s, 11/06/2013, n°14, sold $125,000).