Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron 1898. A complete collection of a hundred novels with illustrations by Jacques Vagretz. Illustrated free appendix to the Bulletin of Foreign Literature for 1898. Medieval Italian literature bequeathed to mankind a precious heritage: three immortal works of three brilliant writers who lived and acted for a hundred and a little years. We are talking about the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Francesca Petrarca and Decameron Giovanni Boccaccio, a close friend of singer Laura and official public interpreter of the Divine Comedy on behalf of the Florentine government. In these three works, the spiritual life of medieval Catholic Europe was so vividly reflected, on the one hand, and so deeply, deeply and artistically depicted, under the real features of medieval characters, feelings and passions of people of all times and peoples - on the other hand, that interest in them will never dry up, oblivion will never touch them, their significance will never be lost. But if Dante belongs entirely to the Middle Ages, if his Comedy is a poetic encyclopedia of medieval world outlook, if, finally, Dante the poet is available to everyone, and Dante the thinker requires an interpreter in the dark wilds of scholasticism and allegory, then Petrarch and especially Boccacio are the two heralds of a new life, a new history, two brilliant figures in the Italian Renaissance. The first Italian humanist and one of the most learned people of Italy, Boccacaccio in his Decameron, combining, as in the focus, in a hundred stories, medieval narrative literature and collecting into one whole, everything that has long filled the artistic imagination of his people, for the first time brought artistic realism to the literature of the new Europe, opened a new path of European narrative literature, which has reached in the footsteps of modern life. More than five hundred years have passed - and the antique book Decameron 1898 edition has not lost its charm: so much artistic sincerity and true observation in it, so unusually vital are the characters in it. Giving the first public publication of all one hundred novels of the great Italian novelist, we consider it useful to briefly acquaint the reader with the life and activities of the author of the immortal Decameron. The son of a Florentine merchant and a Frenchwoman, Giovanni Boccaccio was born in 1313. Regarding the place of birth, the biographers of the great writer still cannot come to an agreement: some say that the future author of Decameron saw the light in Paris, others insist on Florence or its surroundings, in the Tuscan town of Chertaldo, where Boccaccio spent his childhood. His father came from the peasants and was engaged in trade. Being a member and representative of the Bardi trading house, which had extensive affairs in southern Italy, Boccaccio-father lived in Paris in 1310-1313, met there a girl named Jeanne, from a good, but impoverished family, took a son with her, then abandoned her and returned to Florence, where after the death of the deceased from grief, Jeanne discharged his son and where he married again. A gifted child of seven years felt his writing calling and being in school was fond of poetry at an age when ordinary children are not interested in reading at all. By his own consciousness, barely getting acquainted with the first principles of literacy, Boccaccio felt the desire to create and wrote several poetic works, although insignificant, because at such a tender age (seven years) there was not enough spiritual strength for such a thing.