‎"MACHIAVELLI, (NICCOLO).‎
‎Fyrsten. Oversat fra Italiensk ved J.C. Barth. Med en indledende Afhandling af Macaulay. - [FIRST DANISH TRANSLATION OF MACHIAVELLI'S ""THE PRINCE""]‎

‎Kjøbenhavn, Høst & Søn, 1876. 8vo. Nice contemporary half leather binding - originally green leather, but spine and corners evenly faded into brown, leaving only traces of the green colour to the leather parts of the boards. Three raised bands with ornametal gilding and gilt title to spine. An excellent, clean, fresh, and almost spotless copy. (8), 142, (4) pp.‎

Reference : 62648

‎Scarce first edition of the first Danish translation of Machiavelli's monumental ""The Prince"". ""The publication of ""The Prince"" by Machiavelli had immense and widespread effect throughout Europe and it soon reached the distant Scandinavia, where the work was probably circulating form the first decades of the sixteenth century... ""The Prince was not to be translated in Scandinavia until more than two centuries later, partly because in the meantime it could be read in Latin..., but also because at that time a work which established, among other things, the superiority of the Reason State to moral values was unacceptable, at least formally."" (de Pol, pp. 248-49). The first Scandinavian translation of the work is the now exceedingly scarce first Swedish translation by Klingenberg from 1757. ""Klingenberg's work, however, remained an isolated facxt for more than a century. Actually ""The Prince"", as a separate work, was translated [into Swedish] only in 1867... By that time the debate over Machiavelli had been settled, and the value of ""The Prince"" finally acknowledged... The explicit revaluation of ""The Prince"" in Scandinavia had already taken place during the Romantic Age, thanks to the Danish historian Caspar Peter Paludan-Müller (1805-1882), and particularly to his essay ""Undersögelse om Machiavelli som Skribent, især med Hensyn til Bogen om Fyrsten. Et Forsøg i den høiere historiske Kritik."" The first Danish translation of the whole work dates back to only 1876 (""Fyrsten. Oversat fra Italiensk ved J.C. Barth. Med en indledende Afhandling af Macaulay"" - also important because in the volume it is preceded by a renowned essay 1827 by the English historian Thomas Macauley, from whom, possibly, Paludan-Müller himself partly drew his inspiration."" (de Pol, p. 249). In the preface to this first Danish translation, the translator J. C. Barth thanks Casper Paludan-Müller (the author of the first and most significant work about Machiavelli Danish, 1824) for having put at his disposition the explanatory notes that follow the translation. Roberto de Pol: The First Translations of Machiavelli's Prince, 2010). ‎