Oct 27, 2020 - Sale 2549

Sale 2549 - Lot 87

Price Realized: $ 1,375
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 250 - $ 350
Machiavelli, Niccolò (1469-1527)
Clizia, The Friar, and Mandragola, Manuscript on Paper, circa 1816. Text translated into English by Chandos Leigh, 1st Baron Leigh (1791-1850), Leigh's gilt armorial book label pasted inside the front board, early note on ffep identifying the manuscript as written in Leigh's hand, folio manuscript on laid paper with watermark dates c. 1805-1813, approximately 250 pages, in the same neat hand throughout, in brown ink, approximately thirty lines per page, paper sizes vary, likely written in batches on loose signatures later bound up, in brown paper-covered board, leather spine and corners, rebacked, 13 1/2 x 8 1/4 in.

As far as can be traced, Leigh's translations of Machiavelli's comedies have never been published. Leigh was a schoolmate of Lord Byron and an author himself. He dined with Byron before the latter's trip to Europe in April of 1816, and was a cousin of Jane Austen. His Stoneleigh Abbey country house in Warwickshire may be the model for Sotherton Court in Mansfield Park.