What is a scholar? How does a scholar eat, sleep, work, love, live, and die? From Socrates, Confucius and Cicero to Petrarch, Emilie du Chatelet, Nietzsche and hundreds more, a scholar's life is told as never before in this remarkable literary history.

William Marx holds the Chair of Comparative Literature at the College de France.

This book is translated from Vie du lettre (Minuit, 2009), recipient of the Montyon Prize of the Academie francaise in 2010.