Introduction
2.1 Montaigne at Paris and Blois, 1588: La Boetie, the Essais, and the robins
2.1.1. Montaigne at Paris and Blois, 1588
2.1.2. De Thou and Montaigne
2.1.3. Sainte-Marthe and de Thou
2.1.4. De Thou on La Boetie and Montaigne
2.1.5. De Thou's portrait of Montaigne and the fortunes of his Historiae at Rome
2.1.6. Montaigne in De Thou's Vita
2.1.7. Pasquier's Essais
2.1.8. Montaigne as L'Estoile's confessor
2.1.9. Dangers for books in circulation
2.2 Safe transpassage: Geneva and northeastern Italy
2.2.1. Censoring the Essais on their travels
2.2.2. Secure commercement
2.2.3. 'What boldness with another's writings!': Montaigne corrected for safe transpassage from Geneva to France
2.2.4. The man with the book in one hand, the pen in the other
2.2.5. The Genevan editions of 1602
2.2.6. The pastor who had the Essais printed at Geneva in 1602
2.2.7. Goulart and the Essais
2.2.8. The Essais in the northeastern Italian city states
2.2.9. Paolo Sarpi: The Venetian Socrates
2.2.10. Girolamo Canini's Saggi
2.2.11. The enfranchisement of Flavio Querenghi
2.2.12. Conclusion: Ginammi, Naude and the modern re-inventers of ethics
2.3 Learning mingled with nobility in Shakespeare's England
2.3.1. The context of production of Florio's Montaigne
2.3.2. The institution of the English nobility
2.3.3. 'Lecture and advise'
2.3.4. Florio's 'institution and education of Children'
2.3.5. The charge of the tutor
2.3.6. Florio and Daniel on stately virtue
2.3.7. Learned noble conference: from private reading to public stage
2.3.8. Reading for Montaigne's Arcadia in Daniel and Shakespeare
2.4 Reading Montaigne and writing lives in the north of England and the Low Countries
2.4.1. The bookseller William London's catalogue of vendible books
2.4.2. Knowing how to use books: Florio's Montaigne and Sir Henry Slingsby's 'Commentaries'
2.4.3. The liberty of a subject
2.4.4. Pieter van Veen's copy of Paris 1602
2.4.5. Otto van Veen's 'Self-Portrait with Family'
2.4.6. Pieter van Veen's memoir
2.4.7. Van Ravesteyn's portrait of the institution of the Van Veens
2.4.8. Les Essais de Pieter van Veen
2.5 Recording the history of secret thoughts in early modern France
2.5.1. The breviary of urbane loafers and ignorant pseudointellectuals
2.5.2. The 'affranchisement' of amateur reader-writers
2.5.3. L'Estoile and the registre
2.5.4. L'Estoile forges a life from reading-and-writing
2.5.5. The Essais as registre
2.5.6. Montaigne on the mantelpiece in Rheims
2.5.7. Coda: Montaigne migrates to England
2.6 The Essais framed for modern intellectual life
2.6.1. Introduction
2.6.2. German idealism and the modern Montaigne
2.6.3. Burckhardt's inner man
2.6.4. After Burckhardt
2.6.5. Vidal as reader-writer of the Essays, 1992
2.6.6. Denby reads Frame's Montaigne, 1992
2.6.7. Indexing critical agency
2.6.8. The American school of Montaigne
2.6.9. Montaigne and the modern critical agent
2.6.10. The postmodern Montaigne
2.7 Epilogue: Enfranchising the reader-writer in late medieval and early modern Europe
2.7.1. Auerbach's Montaigne
2.7.2. Nexuses in the history of the Essais
2.7.3. Bishop Camus on the Essais
2.7.4. Two copies of Paris 1602
2.7.5. L'Estoile and Charron
2.7.6. Pierre Bayle's Montaigne
2.7.7. L'Estoile and the Essais as registre
2.7.8. The age of learning and the learned book
2.7.9. The battle over the enfranchisement of the reader-writer
2.7.10. The Essais beneath the battle
2.7.11. How can a book be free from servitude?
Conclusion
Bibliography