Studies on Ariosto are well-established. Ludovico Ariosto's masterpiece Orlando furioso continues to be widely discussed, as do his plays, the Satire and the Cinque Canti. Readers naturally desire to become better acquainted with the life of the author, particularly through his non-artistic texts. In light of this, and in order to help those who do not read Italian easily, Dennis Looney has here translated some of Ariosto's most important prose. A large part of the work is made up of letters, 214 to be precise, of which 157 were written between 1522 and 1525 when Ariosto was governor of Garfagnana. Erbolato is also published in this collection, the fictitious and amusing reproduction of a speech made by a charlatan seeking to sell an almost miraculous elixir. Ariosto's writings are preceded by an introduction clearly defining the characteristics of Ariosto's prose. Looney explains in fact that the prose of the letters is “somewhat modest but perfectly suited to the occasion for which it was composed. Although not offensive or ugly, his prose is mainly significant for what it says rather than for how it says it” (3).

Looney's translation seeks, in his own words, to remain literal and at the same time to be reader-friendly. This objective is successfully reached, facilitated by the clarity of Ariosto's style. On the few occasions where the text is ambiguous, for example in the case of a lexical difficulty, or when the reader is ignorant of the historical context when the letter was written, the notes at the end of the volume are useful. The volume ends with a brief bibliography, an index indicating the addressees of the letters, and a general index referring both to people, place names, titles of works mentioned, and to recurring themes such as murder and horses.

This is the first time such a wide selection of Ariosto's prose has been published in a language other than Italian. Both the Renaissance scholar and the reader interested in Cinquecento life will gain great benefit from it for very diverse reasons, even if the only text of high quality from a literary point of view is Erbolato. What is noticeable in this short text is the rhetorical skill with which the charlatan builds an increasingly focused argument, passing from the divine creation of the world to the intelligence of man, to the benefits of medicine and pedlar doctors, to the qualities of the elixir whose secret is only known by the charlatan, to the selling of the elixir and the price asked to the onlookers. The letters are of greater significance for their biographical and historical value than for their literary quality. They show that the romantic image of Ariosto, distant from the world, living exclusively in a poetic domain far from reality, is misplaced. (This has been much discussed in recent scholarship: see, e.g., Stefano Jossa, Ariosto [2009], 16.) Ariosto's letters, despite the doubts he expresses over his ability as a governor, show him to be not only very involved in the concrete reality around him — criminality, problems with the borders of the territory he governed, and, outside his time as a governor, with financial matters linked with his occupation as a writer — but also show, as Looney remarks, that he was “a man whose life was lived large on the world's stage” (4).

However, perhaps the main reason for reading this work has to do with its virtues as an example of the epistolary genre. Through a nonstop reading of the letters in chronological order, the reader can take a glance at the everyday life of a man of the sixteenth century, and get to know his daily concerns, like, for example, the fulminating illness of a cousin (see the letter of 7 July 1519 to Isabella d'Este Gonzaga [50]). In short, the reading of these letters has in some way the same effect as the visit of Ariosto's home in Ferrara has for today's tourist: rendering more human, and therefore closer, one of the greatest writers of the European Renaissance.