This classic work marks the culmination of a definite stage in the socio-economic historiography from the late Middle Ages to the rise of the haute bourgeoisie in the early Renaissance. Here Alfred von Martin attempts to discover and define the spirit or essence of the Renaissance, and with it the spirit of early capitalism as it arose in Florence.His analysis focuses on the capitalist haute bourgeois who represented the economically, politically, and culturally dominant class of the Renaissance. As he shows, eventually its decline brings about a new stasis in the aristocratization of the great bourgeoisie as well as the rise of despotism in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.The shift from an agricultural to a commercial economy was unquestionably one of the essential elements in the transition from medieval to Renaissance civilization. This book's republication is a welcome development and will make this classic accessible again to scholars of the Renaissance and Renaissance humanism. In addition to its new introduction, it also includes a bibliography of von Martin's extensive writings.

A highly personal memoir of Oscar Wilde, and a close copy of the 1932 original, which was limited to 800 copies Reprinted here for the first time since the limited edition of 1932, this is one of the most evocative and touching memoirs ever written about Oscar Wilde and the circles he moved in. Charles Ricketts was one of his closest friends; he also worked on stage productions and books with Wilde. Shortly before he died he wrote this account of his friendship with Wilde, partly as an imagined conversation with a fictitious French writer, Jean Paul Raymond. The memoir was printed by one of the great book designers of the following generation, Francis Meynell. This edition reproduces that original design, including the spectacular cover based by Ricketts on his designs for Salomé. An afterword by Matthew Sturgis puts the work in the context of the 1880s and 1890s, of Wilde's astonishing success and terrible downfall.

Readings on socialism, emphasizing utopian socialists and Marx, demonstrate that socialist aspirations throughout history have been as varied as the individuals expressing them.