How to Live

Description

How to get on well with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love – such questions arise in most people’s lives. They are all versions of a bigger question: how do you live? How do you do the good or honourable thing, while flourishing and feeling happy?

This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-92), perhaps the first truly modern individual. A nobleman, public official and wine-grower, he wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. He called them ‘essays’, meaning ‘attempts’ or ‘tries’. Into them 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, as well as the appalling events of the religious civil wars raging around him. The Essays was an instant bestseller, and over four hundred years later, Montaigne’s honesty and charm still draw people to him. Readers come to him in search of companionship, wisdom and entertainment – and in search of themselves.

This book, a spirited and singular biography (and the first full life 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. It traces his bizarre upbringing (made to speak only Latin), youthful career and sexual adventures, his travels, and his friendships with the scholar and poet Etienne de La Boétie and with his adopted ‘daughter’, Marie de Gournay. And as we read, we also meet his readers – who for centuries have found in Montaigne an inexhaustible source of answers to the haunting question, ‘how to live?’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

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

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

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

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

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