title: Life of Dante (Hesperus Classics)
author:  Giovanni Boccaccio 
description: It is a book that reveals the lives of two great Florentines, not one. James Eve -- <i>The Times</i><br /><br />They dont write biographies like this any more, unfortunately: extremely short, poetic and funny, and quite wonderfully unconcerned with trivia. -- <i>The Guardian</i>
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  Produced by Ted Garvin, Dave Morgan and PG Distributed Proofreaders
  
  LA FIAMMETTA
  
  BY
  
  GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
  
  TRANSLATED BY JAMES C. BROGAN
  
  1907.
  
  INTRODUCTION
  
  Youth, beauty, and love, wit, gayety and laughter, are the component parts of
  the delightful picture conjured up by the mere name of Giovanni Boccaccio, the
  prince of story-tellers for all generations of men. This creator of a real
  literary epoch was born in Paris, in 1313, (in the eleventh year of Dante's
  exile), of an Italian father and a French-woman of good family. His father was
  a merchant of Florence, whither he returned with his son when the child was
  seven years old. The boy received some education, but was placed in a
  counting-house when he was only thirteen, and at seventeen he was sent by his
  father to Naples to enter another commercial establishment. But he disliked
  commerce, and finally persuaded his father to allow him to study law for two
  years at the University of Naples, during which period the 