Item #1493 THE CIVILIZATION OF THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. Jacob Burckhardt.

THE CIVILIZATION OF THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY

Phaidon / Oxford, 1937. Copyright Edition. Hardcover. 640 pp. 4to, finished kahki cloth, gilt stamped lettering. 421 bold black & white photogravure illustrations on 239 plates. Printed in Austria. Owner's signature d. '14 Oct 1939'. Some light patina and minor rubbing to tips, otherwise very clean and sharp. Shockingly fresh condition for such a rabidly consulted text in the mid-century West. NEAR FINE. Item #1493

This "Copyright" Edition is the authoritative presentation in English of the text as Burckhardt left it at his death in 1897. An enormously influential revisionist history of the so-called "Dark Ages". All subsequent editions in English beginning with the 1944 Phaidon edition contracted the extensive illustrations and printed them on "econo-mode." Most notably, these later editions omitted the majority of Burckhardt's notes. Lamenting this decision, J. Carson Webster writes in his review of the subsequent edition, "I think rather of the sensitive reader, specialist or not, who wishes to grasp the work in all its goodness, to penetrate completely into the author's view of the subject, and who will be deprived of the illumination which the author cast, in his own way, on certain points, who will be unable to sense the equilibrium between notes and text in the balance and emphasis of which the author's individual view of the subject finds an intimate expression."

Price: $250.00

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