# Is "Essais / The Essayes (Florio translation)" by Michel de Montaigne a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Essais / The Essayes (Florio translation) by Michel de Montaigne (Simon Millanges, Bordeaux, 1580) is identified by: French first: "Essais de Messire Michel Seigneur de Montaigne, Chevalier de l'Ordre du Roy, & Gentil-homme ordinaire de sa Chambre. Both the original-language and the English editions are collected and they are different books, not issues of one another.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- French first: "Essais de Messire Michel Seigneur de Montaigne, Chevalier de l'Ordre du Roy, & Gentil-homme ordinaire de sa Chambre
- Livre premier & second." Bordeaux, Simon Millanges, 1580; two parts in one octavo volume, roughly 164 x 105 mm, containing Books I and II only, with an errata leaf
- The book was set hastily and probably printed at the author's expense, and its defects are the identification: abundant misprints, inconsistent founts and type, and famously erratic pagination in the second part, which runs to 653 pages but is misnumbered 650 without loss — the variants are so numerous that essentially no two copies collate alike, and no single ideal pagination can be reconstructed. Étienne de La Boétie's sonnets follow the chapter "De l'amitié" here; they were dropped from the 1595 posthumous edition, so their presence is a point
- English high spot: "The Essayes or Morall, Politike and Millitarie Discourses of Lo: Michaell de Montaigne", London, printed by Val[entine] Sims for Edward Blount dwelling in Paules churchyard, 1603; small folio, untrimmed leaves about 295 x 195 mm
- STC (2nd ed.) 18041
- USTC 3001450
- Publisher imprint reads Simon Millanges, Bordeaux

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Michel de Montaigne |
| Publisher | Simon Millanges, Bordeaux |
| Year | 1580 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | French first: "Essais de Messire Michel Seigneur de Montaigne, Chevalier de l'Ordre du Roy, & Gentil-homme ordinaire de sa Chambre |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
French first: "Essais de Messire Michel Seigneur de Montaigne, Chevalier de l'Ordre du Roy, & Gentil-homme ordinaire de sa Chambre. Livre premier & second." Bordeaux, Simon Millanges, 1580; two parts in one octavo volume, roughly 164 x 105 mm, containing Books I and II only, with an errata leaf. The book was set hastily and probably printed at the author's expense, and its defects are the identification: abundant misprints, inconsistent founts and type, and famously erratic pagination in the second part, which runs to 653 pages but is misnumbered 650 without loss — the variants are so numerous that essentially no two copies collate alike, and no single ideal pagination can be reconstructed. Étienne de La Boétie's sonnets follow the chapter "De l'amitié" here; they were dropped from the 1595 posthumous edition, so their presence is a point. English high spot: "The Essayes or Morall, Politike and Millitarie Discourses of Lo: Michaell de Montaigne", London, printed by Val[entine] Sims for Edward Blount dwelling in Paules churchyard, 1603; small folio, untrimmed leaves about 295 x 195 mm. STC (2nd ed.) 18041; USTC 3001450; Pforzheimer 378; Desan 34. The first word of the 1603 title, "THE", is xylographic — printed from a woodcut block rather than from metal type — which is a reliable and easily checked point. Gatherings A8 ¶2 B-Q6 R4 S-2P6 2Q-2R4 2S-3I6 3K4 [3L]2, with leaf 2Q4 blank and leaf 3H2 missigned 3G2; pagination [20], 1-179, [9], 193-450, [10], 475-484, 487-664, [4], with habitual misnumberings (p. 80 as 08, p. 241 as 24, p. 249 as 237, p. 299 as 296, p. 526 as 527, p. 538 as 558, p. 578 as 569, and p. 650 often unnumbered). A counterintuitive point on the 1603: the two errata leaves [3L]1-2, headed "Errors, and omissions marked with this * escaped in this booke", had not yet been prepared when the earliest copies were printed and assembled; they are absent from about a third of examined copies, including all six of the presentation copies hand-corrected by Florio himself. Their absence is therefore not necessarily a defect and may indicate an early copy.

## Is this the true first?
Both the original-language and the English editions are collected and they are different books, not issues of one another. The original-language true first is Bordeaux, Simon Millanges, 1580 — Books I and II only; roughly 39 copies are recorded in public collections and about 50 in private hands. Book III appears for the first time in the 1588 Paris quarto of Abel L'Angelier, the fifth edition and the last published in Montaigne's lifetime, which also inserts more than 600 new passages into Books I-II; the 1595 posthumous Paris folio (Abel L'Angelier, edited by Marie de Gournay with Pierre de Brach from Montaigne's annotated copy) established the standard text. The English-market high spot is John Florio's translation, London, Val. Sims for Edward Blount, 1603 — the first unabridged translation of the Essays into any language. Florio worked primarily from the 1595 Paris folio, occasionally consulting the 1588 quarto and the Paris octavos of 1598, 1600 and 1602; so the English first descends from the 1595 text, not from the 1580 Bordeaux.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club editions are documented for the early printings. The first-thus traps are numerous and matter more. For the English: the 1613 second edition (London, Melchisidec Bradwood for Edward Blount and William Barret) carries Florio's revised text and retitles Samuel Daniel's commendatory poem, and a third edition followed in 1632 — both are Florio, neither is the first. Charles Cotton's rival English translation, first published 1685-86, is a different translation altogether and not an edition of Florio, though it is frequently listed as though it were. For the French: the 1582 Bordeaux second edition, the 1588 Paris quarto and the 1595 Paris folio are all separate editions with their own standing, and a 1587 "missing edition" figures in the bibliography; none is an issue of the 1580. Later abridgements and commonplace-book compilations such as the 1701 Abstract are separate works.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Essais / The Essayes (Florio translation)* by Michel de Montaigne a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/essais-the-essayes-florio-translation
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.