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100 MACHIAVELLI, Niccolò. Nicholas Machiavel’s Prince. London: R. Bishop for William Hils, to be sold by Daniel Pakeman, 1640 The Blair copy of the first English edition of Machiavelli’s handbook for rulers First edition in English of Machiavelli’s famous handbook for rulers (1513, published Rome 1532), dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici, ruler of Florence from 1513; the Blair copy, in contemporary sheep. The Prince appears to have been banned from publication in England during the Elizabethan period, though translations circulated in manuscript. It was so controversial that it had to wait for over a century, and was the last of Machiavelli’s great works to be published in English. Even then, Dacres found it politic to frame the book with moral reservations or “animadversions”, though he did not allow them to seep into his text as did later translators Nevile and Farneworth; he also resisted more than they did the temptation to improve on Machiavelli’s style by rhetorical embellishments. “Hitherto political speculation had tended to be a rhetorical exercise based on the implicit assumption of Church or Empire. Machiavelli founded the science of modern politics on the study of mankind . . . Politics was a science to be divorced entirely from ethics, and nothing must stand in the way of its machinery. Many of the remedies he proposed for the rescue of Italy were eventually applied. His concept of the qualities demanded from a ruler and the absolute need of a national militia came to fruition in the monarchies of the seventeenth century and their national armies” ( PMM ). Machiavelli viewed The Prince as an objective description of political reality. Because he viewed human nature as venal, grasping, and thoroughly self-serving, he suggested that ruthless cunning is appropriate to the conduct of government.
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Though admired for its incisive brilliance, the book also has been widely condemned as cynical and amoral, and “Machiavellian” has come to mean deceitful, unscrupulous, and manipulative. Provenance: from the library of noted American collector and bibliophile Natalie Knowlton Blair (1887–1951), with her Blairhame leather book label on the front pastedown. Duodecimo (143 × 83 mm). Contemporary sheep, unlettered and unlined, single gilt rules, red sprinkled edges. Housed in a brown quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. Contemporary inscription of Jo: Skynner at head of title; Blairhame book label. A few contemporary underlines and the occasional marginal note. Spine a little dried and cracked, a touch of wear at corners, else fine, superficial paper flaw on H7r costing one word, a notably well- margined copy, clean and fresh internally. ¶ Printing and the Mind of Man 63 (first edition); STC 17168. £95,000 [146948]
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Peter Harrington
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