SOURCE: Introduction to The History of Italy, by Francesco Guicciardini, translated and edited by Sidney Alexander, Princeton University Press, 1969, pps. xxv, 59-60, 127-28.

In the following excerpt, Alexander compares Guicciardini's writing style to that of several twentieth-century writers, asserting that Guicciardini's style is modern because it focuses on the individual in history.

"If we consider intellectual power [the Storia d'Italia] is the most important work that has issued from an Italian mind." The judgment is that of Francesco de Sanctis, surely himself one of the foremost Italian minds. But like a great many classics, Guicciardini's History of Italy (published for the first time in 1561, twenty-one years after the author's death) is more honored in the breach than in the observance. Which is a pity, for if not every word need be read, surely a great many of them should be read, not only for the light they cast...