Library4History - Italian History

Few nations have a richer or longer history than Italy, and Italian History is the subject of this latest addition to the Library4History website. Library4History is an innovative online resource that makes key historical texts freely to students, researchers and anyone else with an academic, professional or general interest in history.

The literature on Italian history, from the founding of Rome to the present day, is enormous. Our first two online books are essential and authoritative reviews of two great cities: Pompeii, which flourished, and was destroyed, in the days of the Roman Republic; and Renaissance Florence.

Thomas Henry Dyer's Pompeii was originally published in 1867, and is a fine example of Victorian antiquarian scholarship. Part I: The Public Buildings of Pompeii and Part II: The Private Houses of Pompeii are both reproduced here in their entirety, from the revised and enlarged edition of 1874. Profusely illutrated with engravings, maps and plans, it provides a fascinating account of daily life in the city, firmly based in the evidence found in archaeological excavations.

The French author and reporter Charles Yriarte travelled widely in France, Spain and Italy, and in his many writings combined his own impressions with acute historical observation. An authoritative and immensely readable account of the key figures in Renaissasnce Florence, including Lorenzo di Medici, Dante, Brunelleschi, Savonarola, Machiavelli, Galileo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Benvenuto Cellini, this book also surveys the architecture, art and sculpture for which the city is renowned and celebrated. Originally publisihed in 1880, Yriarte's Florence remains a pertinent example of 19th century Renaissance scholarship, and is still highly readable, and useful, today.

This site aims to make freely available some of the most essential literature now in the public domain (i.e. out of copyright) as online books, offering a wealth of information that is still of intrinsic value. We scan and convert these indispensable texts into web pages that are easy to find and digest, broken down into convenient short sections and sub-sections in line with the chapter and sub-section divisions of the original book. This makes it easy for you to access and read some of most useful and interesting extant material on Italian history.

All material on this site is available free of charge to students, researchers, historians and general readers, with no subscription fees.