Description
Oxford University Press, Published 1942. Hardcover, ix, 398 pp.; 22 cm; frontispiece portrait and 6 plates reproducing period portraits and engravings, pictorial map endpapers of Italy in 1492 drawn by the author.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In Very Good condition, no dust jacket. Red cloth with gilt lettering and crowned-shield device on front cover, gilt lettering on spine, mild shelf and edge wear, light surface scratches and mild soiling to both covers. Binding tight. Endpapers mildly toned. Mild creasing to lower corner of the first twenty or so leaves, otherwise clean and unmarked. A full-length life of Cesare Borgia (1475-1507), Duke of Valentinois, son of Pope Alexander VI and the model for Machiavelli's The Prince, which Beuf follows from the Borgia rise in Rome through the conquest of the Romagna, the murder of the condottieri at Senigallia, the collapse after Alexander's death, and Cesare's end at Viana. Beuf (1893-1981), an Italian-born writer who emigrated to the United States and ranched in Wyoming, wrote the book as a work of history rather than romance; it was reviewed in the American Historical Review and in the Journal of Modern History by the Machiavelli scholar Felix Gilbert, and his typescript draft is now at the Huntington Library. It was the first substantial English-language biography of Cesare since Sabatini (1912) and Woodward (1913), and the last until Bradford (1976). Never reprinted in English; the only later edition is a 1971 Italian translation. Plates include Cesare, Alexander VI, Louis XII, the supposed portrait of Lucrezia, Machiavelli, Vitellozzo Vitelli, and Giuliano della Rovere. Notes, bibliography, and index. Contents: Book One: The Setting; A Woman Called Vannozza; The Descent of the Barbarians; The Die Is Cast; Duc de Valentinois. Book Two: The Anabasis of Forli; All Roads Lead to Rome; Affaire Manfredi; Lucrezia, Marchioness of Ferrara; Urbino; Mutiny; Zenith. Book Three: Dies Irae; Nemesis; Aftermath; Notes; Bibliography; Index.