“The authentic interpreter of Machiavelli is the whole of later history.” —Lord Acton”
Almost immediately upon its 1532 first appearance in print, The Prince exerted a formidable and far-reaching influence. Henry VIII’s agent Thomas Cromwell obtained a manuscript copy only a few years after the first publication. The works of Shakespeare and Marlowe abound with references to the author, and while Machiavelli’s seemingly amoral stance earned him a villainous reputation in Elizabethan England, his keen and practical analysis was admired by major Enlightenment figures such as Bacon, Rousseau and Hume. But The Prince was placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1559— in the “banned absolutely” category—and did not appear in a printed English translation until the Episcopal censorship broke down in 1640, when it was published in a small-format volume that is now exceedingly scarce.
We are currently pleased to offer this very rare and important 1640 Machiavelli’s Prince first edition in English, a seminal work in the foundation of modern political theory and a great classic of political science. Browse our inventory of Niccolo Machiavelli rare books or contact us for more information.