Jacob Burckhardt – författare

For the first time in English, one of the greatest masterpieces of historical writing: ‘Every civilized library must have a copy.’ CHRISTOPHER STACE, Telegraph’A wonderfully fat and vivid reminder of the splendour and miseries of Hellenism…enlightened and enlightening, a joy to read, delicious with anecdotes and a manifest labour of love, candour and openmindedness.’ FREDERIC RAPHAEL, Sunday TimesJacob Burckhardt (1818–97) was one of the greatest historians of classical and Renaissance art, architecture and culture. Though he died over a hundred years ago, his superb prose is as fresh and readable today as it was at the end of the nineteenth century. The Greeks and Greek Civilization describes, in glorious, elegant detail, the lives of the ancient Greeks and the origins of their culture.The book has never appeared before in English. Oswyn Murray, the book’s editor, and his translator, Sheila Stern, have been labouring for many years on the text and now, finally, have ready an authoritative version which, in Oswyn Murray’s words, ‘remains the best account of Greek civilization.’‘His changes in tone, the sudden plunge from the grandest to the most minor themes, the zooming in and out from the broadest panoramas to a particular carpet on a particular floor, the massiveness of his project and the lightness with which he accomplishes it, not to mention his vast knowledge, his clear style, his precision and his general surefootedness, are what makes Burckhardt great in a way that is not so different from the way Shakespeare is great or Rembrandt or Beethoven. He created vast spaces in history, heights and depths, enormous ranges of pitch and timbre, sunny clearings in the midst of impenetrable gloom…Thanks to the efforts of Oswyn Murray and Sheila Stern, a Great Blue Whale is swimming for the first time in English waters. Tiddlers everywhere should be pleased to accept the invitation to swim in its posthumous wake.’ JAMES DAVIDSON, London Review of Books

For nineteenth-century Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, the Italian Renaissance was nothing less than the beginning of the modern world - a world in which flourishing individualism and the competition for fame radically transformed science, the arts, and politics. In this landmark work he depicts the Italian city-states of Florence, Venice and Rome as providing the seeds of a new form of society, and traces the rise of the creative individual, from Dante to Michelangelo. A fascinating description of an era of cultural transition, this nineteenth-century masterpiece was to become the most influential interpretation of the Italian Renaissance, and anticipated ideas such as Nietzsche's concept of the 'Ubermensch' in its portrayal of an age of genius.

Published in 1937: The author’s work on the Renaissance in Italy is too well known, not only to students of the period, but now a wider circle of readers, for any introduction to be necessary.

Published in 1937: The author’s work on the Renaissance in Italy is too well known, not only to students of the period, but now a wider circle of readers, for any introduction to be necessary.

Western Civilisation was in its pomp when Jacob Burckhardt delivered his Judgements on History and Historians; European Empires spanned the globe, while the modern age was being forged in the nationalist revolutions of 1848. As a tutor to the young Friedrich Nietzsche as well as one of the first historians to take 'culture' as his subject rather than the triumphs and travails of kings and generals, Burckhardt was at the vanguard of this modern sensibility. Ambitious in its scope, ranging from the days of Ancient Egypt, through the Reformation to the time of Napoleon, this is indeed a history of 'Western Civilization', written before two monstrous world wars threw such a concept into disrepute.

This authoritative study by a distinguished scholar presents a brilliant panorama of Italian Renaissance life, explaining how and why the period constituted a cultural revolution. It traces the influences of classical antiquity on the age's thinkers and artists and chronicles the revival of humanism, the conflict between church and empire, and the rise of both the modern state and the modern individual.