Early 13th-century Italian judge and writer living in Messina, who wrote in Latin several Latin chronicles and histories. Delle Colonne was a poet of the Sicilian school, a group of early Italian vernacular poets who were associated with the courts of the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II and his son Manfred, and was strongly influenced by the poetry of France and Provence. Guido’s poetry, though slender in inspiration, was intricate in thought and excellent in form. Dante praised two of Guido’s canzoni in “De Vulgari Eloquentia”.
Probably more important than Guido’s poetry, however, is his Historia destructionis Troiae (“History of the Destruction of Troy”), which he completed about 1287. Thought to be a condensed version of the French Roman de Troie by Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Guido’s work was widely translated throughout Europe. William Caxton, the first English printer, translated it from a French source and published it in Bruges about 1474 as The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, the first book Caxton printed and the first book printed in the English language
Read More:
1. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guido_delle_Colonne
2. Encyclopedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com/biography/Guido-delle-Colonne
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