In 1350, the Italian humanist and poet Francesco Petrarca decided to form a collection of all his correspondence. The letters deal with multifarious topics, switch between narration and instruction, and the personal and the general, and are addressed to various of his learned friends and contemporaries. They are a treasure trove for the history of ideas.

This is the first complete German-language edition of the famous 24 books of the Epistolae familiares; they have been translated from the Latin by Prof. Berthe Widmer, an acknowledged authority on Petrarch. The translation...