Little Black Classics - the new series to celebrate Penguin's 80th anniversary 'When the men were off somewhere, he would come visiting their wives more solicitously than any priest they'd had before...'
Author Biography
Boccaccio was born in Florence in 1313. He later moved to Naples, where he became part of the circle at court and started writing books. In 1348, he witnessed the plague in Florence, which killed half the city's population and would become the backdrop to his masterpiece,The Decameron. In later life he befriended the poet Petrarch, who left to him in his will an ermine robe to keep him warm when studying on winter nights. Boccaccio died in 1375.