Francesco di Marco Datini, the 14th-century Tuscan merchant who forms the subject of the Marchesa Origo's study, has now probably become the most intimately accessible figure of the later-Middle Ages. In 1870 the whole astonishing cache, containing some 150,000 letters and great numbers of business documents, came to light. The Marchesa Origo has drawn on this material to paint, in detail, a picture of Italian domestic life on the eve of the Renaissance.

,a name="leopardi">Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) is widely considered the greatest Italian poet since Dante, He was a scholar and philosopher whose out standing scholarly and philosophical works and superb poetry place him in the pantheon of great nineteenth-century writers.