ACTON, Harold ~ The Last Medici.

FIRST UK PRINTING. Faber and Faber, London: 1932.

Large format 8vo., green cloth lettered in gilt with device to spine; upper edge stained red; in the unclipped photographic dustwrapper, priced 18s. net to the front flap; with black and white frontis and a further 15 pages of plates; THE BOOK near-fine, a touch bumped at spine tips with a couple of tiny marks to the outer edges of the text block; THE WRAPPER very good, some water staining to the backstrip, a little overall toning and darkening to panels ,with some small nicks and chips at edges, front flap beginning to split at head, and a 5cm tear at head of spine. Seldom found in such good condition. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. First UK edition. This example together with two original Faber advertisements loosely inserted; the first for new novels in Spring 1932, and the second for 'Chaucer' by G. K. Chesterton. An account of 'The Last Medici', being a history of the lives of Princess Marguerite-Louise d'Odleans and her husband, the last in the line of the Medici dynasty, which ran from the 13th to the 18th centuries. Alongside a vivid description of Florentine history, Acton recounts the reactionary ways of Cosimo III de' Medici, penultimate monarch of Tuscany, who in 1713 altered Tuscan laws of succession to allow his daughter to take the throne. In 1735, however, as part of a territorial arrangement, European powers appointed Duke Francis Stephen of Lorraine as heir, and he ascended the Tuscan throne in her place. The work concludes with the death of his final child, the last of his bloodline, Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici. Upon her death, she bequeathed the Medicis' large art collection to the Tuscan state. As opposed to a political history, Acton's work follows the cultural decline of Tuscany, Cosimo III's despotic laws, and the final question of the Tuscan Succession. Acton's best works were perhaps his biographies and autobiographies. Born near Florence, he retained a fascination with Italian history for the majority of his life, and his magnum opus was considered to be his three volume work on the Medici and Bourbon families (separate publications to the present example). Scarce with the dustwrapper in this condition.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Near Fine
JACKET: Very Good