Man of Glass: Boccaccio: A Biography
In early June 1363, Giovanni Boccaccio received a letter that stung him deeply. Just a few days shy of his fiftieth birthday, he was then at the height of his creative powers. He had already penned at least a dozen major works, including the Decameron, any one of which would have assured him a place alongside Dante and Petrarch in the firmament of Italian literature. Although recent political upheavals had forced him to leave his native Florence, he was still writing feverishly. Yet to his frien