Portrait of Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592), aged 57, small half length, in black costume and a white collar

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) was the author of the celebrated volumes of collected Essays that established him as one of the most important philosophers of his or any age--the father of skeptical thought--and as the precursor of Enlightenment thought, who became the first master and model of the written self portrait. 'I am myself the matter of my book' he wrote, and as a witty prose stylist whose words evoke the spontaneous workings of thought and trace the journey to self-awareness and identity, his Essays have profoundly affected the writings of authors from Shakespeare (who knew the first English translation of 1603) to Voltaire, Rousseau, Byron, Thackeray, Flaubert, Emerson, and Eliot.