Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533–1592) was a Gascon nobleman, trained in law, who sat as a counsellor in the Parlement of Bordeaux until 1570. In 1571 he withdrew to the tower library of his château to read and write, interrupted by service as mayor of Bordeaux (1581–1585) and by the Wars of Religion that raged around his estate. His closest friend, Étienne de La Boétie, died in 1563; Montaigne himself suffered from kidney stones from about 1578 until his death.
Montaigne called his pieces essais, 'trials' or 'attempts', and the word names both a method and a new literary genre. The book gathers 107 chapters in three books, ranging from one-page notes on thumbs, smells and names to the sprawling 'Apology for Raymond Sebond', which fills a sixth of the whole.
This small volume presents Montaigne's celebrated essay on friendship together with other essays from the Essais in M. A. Screech's translation. The title essay, 'Of Friendship' (Book I, Chapter 28 in modern numbering), was written as a memorial to Étienne de La Boétie, the young magistrate and humanist whom Montaigne met in Bordeaux around 1558 and who died in 1563.
