The Merchant of Prato - Iris Origo

This
extraordinary re-creation of the life of a medieval Italian merchant,
Francesco di Marco Datini, is one of the greatest historical portraits
written in the twentieth century.

Drawing on an astonishing cache of
letters unearthed centuries after Datini's death, it reveals to us a
shrewd, enterprising, anxious man, as he makes deals, furnishes his
sumptuous house, buys silks for his outspoken young wife and broods on
his legacy. It is an unequalled source of knowledge about the texture of
daily life in the small, earthy, violent, striving world of
fourteenth-century Tuscany.

'Datini has now probably become most intimately accessible figure of the later Middle Ages ... brilliant and intricate' The Times

'As a picture of Tuscany before the dawn of the Renaissance it is a complement to The Decameron' Sunday Times