The cornerstone of the University of Chicago Library's holdings of works by and about Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) is the 1966 bequest of University alumna Lillian Alberta Wells (Ph.B., 1914). Miss Wells's gift of about 500 volumes, primarily works of French language and literature, includes three of the four editions of the Essais published during Montaigne's lifetime, several later editions, works that influenced Montaigne, and numerous works of Montaigne scholarship.
Lillian Wells came to the University of Chicago from Traverse City, Michigan, in 1909 and received her Ph.B. in 1914. She taught French at Sidney Lanier High School in Montgomery, Alabama, and at Harrison Technical High School in Chicago; and returned to the University and completed coursework for the Master's degree in Romance Languages in 1929. In her later years, Wells maintained homes in Traverse City; Oswego, New York; and New York City.
Her bequest includes reading copies and rare editions of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature; and it reflects the complementary interests of a student, teacher, and book collector. A significant number of the rare editions in Miss Wells's collection are of distinguished provenance, having been owned by noted book collectors Henri Bordes, Robert Hoe, Cortlandt Bishop, and others. Wells purchased several of these books at the sale of Boshop's library.
The Lillian A. Wells bequest contains the first edition of the Essais, published in Bordeaux in 1580; and the revised and augmented second and "fifth" edition of 1582 and 1588 (only three editions prior to 1588 are known). The first Parisian edition of 1587, a corrected resetting of the 1582 text, was received as a gift from Julius Rosenwald. The Library also holds a good number of the important posthumous editions, among them the 1595 edition, the first to be edited by Marie Le Jars de Gournay (1566-1645), from the Wells collection; and the rare 1598 edition, incorporating corrections made by Gournay, which was recently acquired on the Helen and Ruth Regenstein Rare Book Fund, with the support of the Division of the Humanities.
Adapted from the "Preface and Acknowledgments" of Montaigne in Print; The Presentation of a Renaissance Text, by Philippe Desan and Arnaud Coulombel (Montaigne Studies and The University of Chicago Library, 1995). Published in conjunction with the exhibition "Montaigne in Print: The Presentation of a Renaissance Text" held in the Department of Special Collections, the University of Chicago Library, October 25, 1995 - February 2, 1996. Copies of this publication and other exhibition catalogues are available for purchase from the Special Collections Research Center.
For further information on the Wells Collection, please contact:
Special Collections Research Center
University of Chicago Library
1100 E. 57th Street
Chicago, Illinois 60637