The Diaries of Felix Platter
Coming of Age in the Renaissance
Format:Paperback
Publisher:McNally Jackson Books
Publishing:16th Apr '26
£12.59 was £13.99
This title is due to be published on 16th April, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
The wildly vivid, rare, and revealing journals of a sixteenth-century medical student.
In 1552, sixteen-year-old Felix Platter left Basel, Switzerland, and journeyed 370 miles to Montpelier, France to study medicine. His journals chronicle five astonishing years of youth in a time of plague, war, and awakening. A Protestant in a Catholic kingdom, Felix witnessed blood-chilling executions and engaged in secret religious discussions with his landlord, a Marrano Jew. He learned to play the lute, tasted olive oil for the first time, and swam in the sea. He flirted (unsuccessfully) and danced (disastrously), fled from highway robbers, saw John Calvin preach, survived an outbreak of the bubonic plague, joined in a massive, orange-throwing food fight, acquired a dog, and spent one Christmas Eve alone and afraid of the dark.
Most astonishing of all, he wrote it down.
As Stephen Greenblatt writes in his introduction to this new edition, “Keeping diaries and writing autobiographies did not become a widespread practice until the mid-seventeenth century”—but Felix created an astonishing document: an intimate, sometimes hilarious chronicle of Renaissance adolescence from the inside, whose “vividness, intimacy, candor, and charm” lend it an “altogether rare and revealing character.”
“In recalling the scenes of his youth, he did something extraordinary: he set aside his years of experience and knowledge of the world and recovered what it felt like to be a naïve, untested teenager venturing out into unfamiliar and often dangerous territory . . . The result reflects rare gifts of inexhaustible curiosity, sharp intelligence, and a canny eye for detail.”
—Stephen Greenblatt, from the Foreword
“This book gives a rare glimpse into the life of a teenage medical student in 16th century France. His diaries detail his interest in anatomy (leading to some grave-robbing), his navigating the complicated religious landscape, and his day-to-day relationship with friends, plus meeting girls. He comes through as intelligent, observant and kind – a wonderful guide to a chaotic and frightening time period.”
—Suzanne Morgan, Politics and Prose (Washington, DC)
“Beloved Son Felix: Coming of Age in the Renaissance compiles Felix’s meticulous documentation of some five years of his life in the sixteenth century as a medical student, Protestant, and capital-P Person in a country marred by religious persecution and plague . . . This gorgeous reissue from McNally Editions features illustrations from Platter’s own diaries along with woodcuts by the Swiss-German artist Jost Amman . . . Felix’s keen eye for beauty keeps one teetering between the sublime and the gruesome . . . Felix renders his surroundings with pointillistic pleasure.”
—Luke Gair, The Sewanee Review, Staff Picks
“As delightful to the ordinary reader as it is useful to the social historian . . . A translation which perfectly captures the freshness and character of the original.”
—C. V. Wedgwood, Sunday Times
“A lively glimpse of a slice of sixteenth-century European life . . . The work does give some nice insight into life in those times, as well as Platter’s character. He plays the lute, goes to dances, and is perhaps a bit of a dandy . . . Beloved Son Felix [offers] a nice and quite far-ranging slice and tour of life in those times . . . It all makes a fun (and sometimes grisly) tour of the times.”
—Michael Orthofer, The Complete Review
“An excellent English translation . . . the well-chosen illustrations, which include a number of drawings by Jennett and two portraits of Platter, add to its attractiveness.”
—W. T. Stearn, The British Journal for the History of Science
“One of the earliest travel diaries of its kind and surely one of the most truthful. It is also one of the most interesting, its only fault being that it is too short. It has now been admirably translated into English in its entirety.”
—Geoffrey Keynes, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts
“An honest diary gives a vivid picture of contemporary life. This book is such a record . . . His plain narrative delineates the cruel customs of the time.”
—Zachary Cope, The British Medical Journal
ISBN: 9781961341685
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
176 pages