The Merchant of Prato

by Iris Origo

Published December 1957
Datini, a fourteenth-century Florentine merchant banker, provides us with one of the great success stories of the Middle Ages. He left behind the entire archive of his business - over 150,000 letters, some 500 ledgers and accounts books, and a mass of personal and business documents that Iris Origo tracked down, translated, selected, and made accessible to the modern reader in this award-winning and singular biography.