MONTAIGNE (Michel de). Lot n° 255

Essays. Cinquiesme edition, augmentée d'un troisiesme livre et de six cens additions aux deux premiers. Paris, Abel L'Angelier, 1588. In-4 (253 x 197 mm) of (4) ff. and . Marbled calf (hammered leather), ornate spine, title page, red edges (17th century binding, restored). Old handwritten annotations erased (XIXth c.) causing some brown spots on the endpapers, with slight discharge at the top of the engraved title and more marked discharges on the last 2 ff. Old signature in ink on title (Boursier?). Some light soiling to the title. Title leaf slightly cut in the upper margin with small damage to the engraving otherwise well complete with its margins which is rare (of a larger format than the rest of the book, it is often very reduced by the binder's knife). Small tear with lack in the lower margin of the 2nd introductory leaf. Very small clear angular ring on a few pages. Very slight traces of light wax on f. 146 and opposite. Old marginalia in brown ink on f. 260. Some foxing or very light soiling in places. Very fine worm gallery in the margin of ff. 317 to 333. A few rare marginal tears (without affecting the text) well restored. Marginal angular loss on f. 461. 4 ff. n. ch. and 504 ff. misfigured 496 (anarchic pagination between ff. 155 and 170). Fifth edition, the last one published during Montaigne's lifetime, rare and sought after. It contains the first two books, abundantly increased by 600 additions and the third book in ORIGINAL EDITION. It is decorated with a beautiful etched frontispiece title attributed to a master of the Fontainebleau School (cf. Jean Balsamo and Michel Simonin, ""Abel L'Angelier et Françoise de Louvain (1574-1620)"", Geneva, Droz, 2002, p. 126), here in second state (with the date added and the mistake ""orand"" corrected to ""grand""). A fine copy, with good margins. Although the frontispiece announces this edition as the fifth, in fact only three earlier editions are known (the substitution of the fourth edition for the fifth may have been motivated by a desire to suggest that the book was selling better than it was, according to Sayce and Maskell, 4). This edition ""gives the first text of which Montaigne stopped writing definitively"" (Reinhold Dezeimeris, pp. 7-8). "In 1588, the Essays are the subject of a new edition, entirely revised and corrected, augmented by the third Book. Montaigne was to keep until his death a copy of this edition which he overloaded with various remarks, reflections and quotations; Pierre de Brach and Marie de Gournay, the "daughter-in-law" of the author, established the posthumous edition of 1595 from that one. To the first two Books, guarantors of the original success of Montaigne, came to be added, in 1588, a third piece; the more rigorously personal approach, more intimist of this one was to ensure, better than all, the perenniality of the Essays" (Fr. Pottiée-Sperry, En Français dans le texte, n° 73). (Tchemerzine, VIII, 405; R. Dezeimeris, Recherche sur la recension du texte posthume des Essais de Montaigne, Bordeaux, 1866, p. 7-8.)