Girolamo Cardano (1501-76) is one of the most original thinkers of his day; a polymath who applied his mind to philosophy, medicine, mathematics, mechanics and astrology, and whose intellectual career led him to study and teach Pavia, Padua, Milan, and Bologna. He is also one of the earliest and most original autobiographers; his De propria vita was written at the very end of his life, and eventually published posthumously by the French scholar Gabriel Naudé in 1643. Before that, he had issued a number of accounts of his own writings; these helped to secure his reputation in to the republic of letters throughout Europe during his own lifetime.

The various versions of Cardano's De libris propriis which are brought together in this volume developed from simple lists of his compositions to full and intricate accounts of his own intellectual and personal life, and include his assessment of the whole field of knowledge of his day, and the place he claimed to occupy in it.

Ian Maclean is Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Oxford, a Senior Research Fellow of All Souls College, and a Fellow of the British Academy. Among his publications are The Renaissance notion of woman (1980, frequently reprinted), Meaning and interpretation in the Renaissance: the case of law (1992), Montaigne philosophe (1996) and Logic, signs and nature in the Renaissance: the case of learned medicine (2001), together with numerous articles on Renaissance law, medicine, intellectual history, the history of the book, and figures such as Cardano and Montaigne.