The Decameron:
Publisher: Random House
Published: June 1955
Format: Hardcover
ISBN-13: 9780394600710
Subjects: Europe; Fiction; History; Plague; Storytelling
First sentence: Every time I stop to consider your natural inclination to pity, most gracious ladies, I recognize that you will find the opening of this present work abhorrent and distressing; for so is the painful recapitulation of the recent deadly plague, which occasioned hardship and grief to everyone who witnessed it or had some experience of it, and which marks the introduction of my work.