Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2015 March 23

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March 23

I have a question about the historical woman named Valasca?

It says she is mentioned in a book called history of Bohemia by Aeneas Silvius. Would this book be available in the library and is she mentioned in any other books? Thanks! Venustar84 (talk) 00:46, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Well, it's obviously not by Aeneas Silvius, who (if he was a real person at all) lived about 1,800 years before Valasca. But see the note at the top of that article: the actual author of the book is Pope Pius II, who was also known as Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini. I'll fix the link in the article. The book itself can be found in an edition dated 1591 as a free ebook here on Google Books, but it's in Latin. I tried Google Books's search function to search for the word Valasca in it, but there were no hits; however, I suspect that the OCR of book type from that period is not reliable, so that doesn't mean she's not mentioned in the book.

I think it's safe to say that most public libraries will not include books like this, but some university libraries might. However, if you want it in English, that would be harder. I tried a Worldcat [1] search for the original title Historia Bohemica with "Silvius" as author, but this did not turn up any editions in English; but when I put "Pius" as author, it found copies at the British Library, at Oxford University, and in microform at the Morris Library at Southern Illinois University. Possibly there are editions under other titles also. --65.94.50.15 (talk) 04:21, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Even at a local public library, OP may be able to get a copy (or a digital scan) via interlibrary loan. Could also try at WP:REX. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:40, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

The abovementioned free ebook tells the history of princess Libuše in chapter five and Valasca's story in chapter seven. There are German and Czech translations of the text available, but no English translations. The text by Thomas Lodge may serve as an introduction. --Stuhlsasse (talk) 11:06, 24 March 2015 (UTC)