The Merchant of Prato

First published in 1957, this history reconstructs the life of Francesco di Marco Datini, a fourteenth-century merchant of Prato, from the letters, ledgers, and household papers he left. Origo follows Datini from Avignon back to Tuscany, through partnerships in cloth, wool, arms, and banking, and through his marriage to Margherita, whose letters record a childless house and a husband often away. Plague, piety, and the founding of a hospital close the account. The book is a documentary portrait of one medieval firm and marriage, not a general economic theory of the Renaissance.

Bound in dark red cloth decorated in black and gold. Colour-printed endleaves. Mottled grey slipcase.