Merchant Writers: Florentine Memoirs from the Middle Ages and Renaissance

‘The content of these ricordanze is so rich and accessible that they not only can provide an introduction to late medieval history to newcomers but they also continually reveal new insights to readers already familiar with these texts.’

Brian Jeffrey Maxson, Sixteenth Century Journal vol 47:04:2016

‘The great pleasure of this book is the way the author involves readers in the rich fabric of life in Florence and the activities of the city’s merchants in the world beyond its walls.’

Jeanette M. Fregulia, Renaissance Quarterly vol 70: 01:2017

“These merchant writings paint a wonderfully candid, varied, and vivid portrait of the practical realities that confronted the fourteenth-century Italian merchant; they depict the social, political, and economic milieu through which he forged his way, at times with a handful of florins, at others with bales of wool, casks of wine, and other merchandise, and, more often than one might have thought, with the help of a dagger or sword.”

Tobias Foster Gittes, Liberal Arts College, Concordia University

“The memoirs and family histories in Merchant Writers will interest historians, anthropologists, and scholars of cultural studies, as well as those curious about Florentine families in the days of Boccaccio. Murtha Baca’s translation is truly outstanding, a superb job done with competence and exquisite taste.”

Paolo Cherchi, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago