MACHIAVELLI, Niccolò.

I discorsi . . . sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio . . . Nuovamente corretti, & con somma diligenza ristampati.

‘In Palermo appresso gli heredi d’Antoniello degli Antonielli a xxviii di gennaio’ [but London, John Wolfe], 1584 [and] Il prencipe. ‘In Palermo appresso gli heredi d’Antoniello dagli Antonielli a xxviii di gennaio’ [but London, John Wolfe], 1584. Two works bound together, small 8vo (150 x 105 mm), ff. [14], [2, blank], 200; 78, [2]; occasional underscoring and marginal annotations; a few headlines very slightly shaved, some corners dog-eared; contemporary limp vellum, top edges of covers worn, small piece missing from head of spine; ownership inscription ‘G. Kelton 1588’ on front paste-down and initial ‘G. K.’ on lower edge (a George Kelton is recorded at Caius College, Cambridge, in 1581/2: see Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses I/iii p. 4). Purporting to be printed at Palermo, these are in fact surreptitious London printings of Machiavelli’s Discourses and Prince. They are often found bound together, as here, and may well have been originally sold as such (see Woodfield p. 10). Although there is no evidence to indicate a positive prohibition in England on reading Machiavelli, these editions were illicit, being unlicensed: ‘The ban on Machiavelli in England in the sixteenth century seems to have taken the form of a refusal to license the printing of Il principe and I discorsi’ (Raab, English face of Machiavelli p. 52).I discorsi and the Il principe were first published in 1531 and 1532 respectively, but various papal prohibitions effectively killed off publication of Machiavelli’s principal works in Italy after 1554 until 1630, when an edition of the Discorsi was printed in Venice. ‘There were, though, editions of the original texts of Machiavelli’s major works with false Italian imprints prepared by that enterprising Elizabethan printer John Wolfe, who recognized and seized the unique business opportunities offered by the hamstringing of native Italian presses . . . . [Wolfe’s] remarkable career – from young rebel against the printing establishment to ruthless and persecuting member of that same establishment – earned him first a reprimand for his “Machiavellian devices”, and subsequently the nickname Machivill. Wolfe makes no bones about greatly admiring Machiavelli’s sharpness of intellect and the novelty of his methods for drawing useful lessons from the reading of history . . . [and] enthuses, “I have learned more in one day about the governments of the world, than I have achieved in the rest of my life, from all the histories I have read” [Discorsi, “Lo stampatore al benigno lettore”]. As he observes, there are few copies of Machiavelli’s works to be found and, more to the point – although he does not say so – since printers in Italy were forbidden to produce these books, there would probably be a lucrative market for “Italian” editions’ (Anglo, Machiavelli – the first century pp. 174, 366–7; see also Donaldson, ‘John Wolfe, Machiavelli, and the republican arcana’, Machiavelli and mystery of state pp. 86–110).‘Rightly or wrongly, both books have been read as articulating a doctrine of reason of state, and for that reason are considered classics of political realism’. ‘On a host of contested issues, his works have invited diverse interpretations. At one extreme, Machiavelli is a teacher of evil, the originator of “Machiavellism”, an ethic of unscrupulous egoism in individual conduct. At the other, he is a moralist who satirizes this ethic from an essentially Christian standpoint. Between these extremes we find readings of Machiavelli as a theorist of the principles of practical wisdom required to establish, maintain, and strengthen a state. It is this last Machiavelli whose writings inspired both the tradition of reason of state connected with the rise of absolutism in Italy, France, and Germany and the anti-absolutist civic republican tradition in England and America. It is also this Machiavelli who, along with Hobbes, helped to generate the tradition of political realism in foreign policy. According to the realists, because each state must defend its own interests, there can be no moral limits on the competition of states for power. Reason of state, here, means that international relations is a realm in which the rules of civil society do not apply: rules guiding personal conduct or domestic politics are irrelevant to foreign policy’ (Brown, International relations in political thought pp. 257, 245).Bertelli & Innocenti XVI/170, XVI/171; STC 17159.5, 17167 (noting some copies read ‘degli’ in the imprint); Woodfield, Surreptitious printing in England 34 (describing two settings of the first signature with minor variations in the title-page: for example ours, which Woodfield considers the rarer, has ‘con somma diligenza’ rather than ‘con somma cura’), 35.

• GBP 5,250.00 > otras divisas
• nº de pedido: T2143

• librero: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (GREAT BRITAIN)