all readers." The review in Renaissance News praised Bishop for "[having] managed to find a human being at the heart of [the superabundance of Petrarch's life] and to treat him kindly as well as sanely", and praised the book for its informative and interest and the gracefulness of its translations. The New York Times regular book reviewer Orville Prescott described the book as "scholarly and yet lively", with "many smoothly flowing translations", yet suggested that it might be found too long to be read cover to cover. The reviewer for Speculum conceded that the book had some brilliant ingredients, but compared it unfavourably with one by the Petrarch specialist Ernest H. Wilkins, which was more painstaking, "equally vivid and even more so", and "emerges with something solid"; whereas Bishop failed to provide a coherent picture of Petrarch or even to give the impression that he possessed one. Bishop translated Petrarch's letters (selected from both the Familiares and the Seniles, and elsewhere) from Latin for Letters from Petrarch (1966). Mark Musa, a scholar of Italian literature, thought it an "elegant" translation, one that "captured the spirit and tone of the poet's Latin letters". The review for Renaissance Quarterly, whose author estimated that the content represented "about one tenth" of Petrarch's surviving letters, started: This is a book for students of comparative literature who do not read Latin (if there are any). It is also for the undergraduate member of Renaissance literature or Renaissance history courses. It is most definitely for the general reader, who will probably not read it. The review continued by saying that Bishop's book complemented James Harvey Robinson and Henry Winchester Rolfe's Petrarch the First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters (1898), the latter remaining "most valuable" despite its stilted translations. The review for The Modern Language Journal (MLJ) regretted abridgements and liberties with the translations, but concluded by praising the book as "a worthy effort to bring material not easily accessible to the attention of the cultured laymen for whom it is intended. The translation is eminently readable and is distinguished by the elegance which we have come to expect of Professor Bishop. . . " Both the Renaissance Quarterly and the MLJ review noted that the letters seemed to have been selected to fit Bishop's interests, or those of the educated lay reader, rather than to represent a more rounded picture of Petrarch's concerns. Ronsard In