How to Live, Or, A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

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 Balk 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?' --Book Jacket.