In one of my often pricey midnight impulses a few weeks back I almost bought a three volume facsimile edition of the hand-annotated Bordeaux edition of Montaigne’s Essais. There is a likely nicer single volume color edition printed in 2002 that I have never been able to find, while this is a 1987 black and white photostat copy printed by Slatkine. Fortunately I exercised restraint and found a library willing to send me their copy for a bit. It’s fascinating as insight into his revision process but – like my Proust facsimile – impossible to read and, for general purposes, unnecessary next to the Pleiade edition that works (most of) his changes into the body of the text or the notes and variants section of the edition.
Extracts 