How to Live
  • Published: 1 March 2011
  • ISBN: 9781446450901
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 400
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How to Live

A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer

Formats & editions
Paperback
1 Mar 2011
EBook
1 Mar 2011
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Part biography, part self-help, an original, funny and moving portrait of Montaigne, Renaissance nobleman and essayist.

How to get on well with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love? How to live?

This question obsessed Renaissance nobleman Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-92), who wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. Into these essays he put whatever was in his head: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dog's ears twitched when it was dreaming, events in the appalling civil wars raging around him. The Essays was an instant bestseller, and over four hundred years later, readers still come to him in search of companionship, wisdom and entertainment - and in search of themselves.

This first full biography of Montaigne in English for nearly fifty years relates the story of his life by way of the questions he posed and the answers he explored.
  • Published: 1 March 2011
  • ISBN: 9781446450901
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 400
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Sarah Bakewell

Sarah Bakewell had a wandering childhood in Europe, Australia and England. After studying at the University of Essex, she wrote fiction and worked in bookshops before becoming Curator of early printed books at the Wellcome Institute Library for the History of Medicine in London. She curated an exhibition with Marina Warner for the Science Museum and catalogues rare book collections for the National Trust. She is the author of The Smart;The English Dane: From King of Iceland to Tasmanian Convict, and the bestselling biography How to Live: A life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer. www.sarahbakewell.com

Also by Sarah Bakewell

At The Existentialist Café
Humanly Possible
The English Dane
The Smart
See all

Praise for How to Live

Sarah Bakewell has written a marvellously confident and clear introduction to Montaigne...a rare achievement. Sarah Bakewell deserves congratulations for opening Montaigne to new readers so very appealingly

Evening Standard

How to live is a superb, spirited introduction to the master, and should have its readers rushing straight to the essays themselves

Adam Thorpe, Guardian

Bakewell writes with verve. This is an intellectually lively treatment of a Renaissance giant and his world

Daily Telegraph

With this splendidly conceived and exquisitely written double biography - of both Montaigne the man and Montaigne the book - Sarah Bakewell should persuade another generation to fall in love with Montaigne

Sunday Times

Illuminating and humane book... It's rare to come across a biographer who remains so deliciously fond of her subject... How to Live will delight and illuminate

Independent