Machiavelli - The First Century: Studies in Enthusiasm, Hostility, and Irrelevance (Oxford-Warburg Studies) - Hardcover

The difficulties of dealing with a subject which is so elusive and complex have not prevented the author from giving us a truly important work, rich in ideas, and with a bibliographic framework of remarkable breadth and accuracy, which encompasses the whole European perspective ... (Michaela Valente, Bruniana & Campanelliana Anno XII)

Anglo succeeds in bringing order to a period of European thought which selects as its spokesman, both positive and negative, Machiavelli. (Michaela Valente, Bruniana & Campanelliana Anno XII)

Sydney Anglo, with his customary verve, humour, scholarship, and stamina, takes the reader in search of Machiavelli ... A vivid and thorough summary of the various ways in which Machiavelli was read... (Diego Zancani, TLS)

Machiavelli - The First Century is [also] a celebration of the greatness of one individual who not only got his own century talking, but the following ones as well. (Diego Zancani, TLS)

The weightiest treatment yet to appear in English of the reception of Machiavelli's works (The English Historical Review)

Anglo has written a profoundly learned and complex book, but one that provides a hugely impressive argument for the difficulty, as well as the importance, of doing the history of ideas properly and explaining Machiavelli's legacy effectively. (Political Studies)

Sydney Anglo raises the whole question of Machiavelli and his 'influence' to a totally new level. His arguments are powerful and persuasive. (Keith Thomas)

The first feeling one has when approaching this big book is...one of great admiration (Marco Formisano, Renaissance Studies)

This is a very impressive book. (N.W. Bawcutt, Modern Language Review, 102.1)

Between 1513 and 1525 Niccolò Machiavelli wrote a series of works dealing with political, military, and historical matters. One of these (the 'Arte della guerra') was published in 1521, but the rest of his major writings were not published until 1531-2, nearly five years after his death. They continued to be reissued regularly, well into the early seventeenth century. The popularity of Machiavelli's books, the variety of his themes, the different contexts within which he was studied, the range of readers' interests, and the fact that his name entered the vocabulary of every European language - all make his early reception a fruitful field of enquiry. Historians of ideas have tended to tidy up the past in order to make it comprehensible but Sydney Anglo is concerned with heterogeneity, and with the often irrational and emotional aspects of sixteenth-century thought. Basing his research entirely upon primary sources he quotes extensively in the conviction that, in a battle of words, the words themselves and their tone convey more than summaries of intellectual abstractions.

Authors - hostile, enthusiastic, and indifferent - are closely examined; and many different contexts, political and intellectual, are considered. Sometimes Machiavelli was influential, sometimes not, but in this history of his reception, silences often prove significant. Written in a lively and trenchant style, this new interpretation of the impact of Machievalli is an original contribution of high quality by a leading expert in the field of Renaissance studies.