Sarah Bakewell is a genius. In this book she gives us a moving biography of Montaigne, a history of the genesis and contents of his marvelous essays, an introduction to the history of editing his great masterpiece, and a lively and fascinating narrative of informed and popular responses to his book in successive eras. Montaigne very much feels like real presence in this book, one with a distinctive personality that is vividly represented by the author. One feels that Bakewell, along with hundreds or thousands of earlier readers have developed a personal relationship with the great writer, and Bakewell helps explain why this in the case even though an overwhelming share of readers of his essays of course have had no contact with him, except through his essays. Bakewell also does a wonderful and interesting job of explaining the very different critical reception Montaigne's essays received among his contemporaries and in succeeding generations of readers, both in France and elsewhere.
The ingenuity of the biography helps explain why critical reception of Bakewell's own book was so positive. But the plain fact is that Bakewell is also a stylish writer, capable of holding our fascinated (and occasionally amused) attention, even when she is discussing the minutiae of successive editions or of obscure editorial quarrels. The book was warmly recommended to me by a friend who said flatly it was the best book he'd read in a year or, indeed, in any recent year. You'll probably find this kind of enthusiasm in many of the Amazon reviews. If you're interested in philosophy or in a charismatic writer and thinker in a long bygone, tumultuous era, and if you care about artful construction and stylish writing, this might be the book for you. It certainly was for me.
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