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Secondary sourceBook1892

The Life and Times of Niccolò Machiavelli

Pasquale Villari · 1892

A late 19th-century biography by Pasquale Villari placing Machiavelli's life against the Renaissance Italy he lived in.

A later scholarly biography that studies Machiavelli's life and the Renaissance world he worked in.

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Full text (Internet Archive)

About this source

What it is

A biography of Niccolò Machiavelli written by the historian Pasquale Villari and published in 1892, translated into English by Linda Villari. It was digitized from a library copy by the Internet Archive.

Why it matters

Villari's work was one of the major nineteenth-century attempts to study Machiavelli's life and writings in the context of Renaissance Italy. It shows how later historians tried to understand Machiavelli's ideas and reputation long after his death.

Look closer

  • Why might a historian write a whole book on one person's life and times?
  • What can a biography written centuries later tell us, and what might it get wrong?
  • How might Villari's own era have shaped his view of Machiavelli?

This book is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Niccolo Machiavelli on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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