Poggio Bracciolini, Gian Francesco

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Poggio Bracciolini, Gian Francesco, 1380-1459, Italian humanist. A secretary in the Roman curia, he later became chancellor and historiographer of the republic of Florence. A prodigious copyist, he rediscovered many lost classical works, including Lucretius' De rerum natura and Quintilian's Institutio oratorica. His Facetiae (1474), a collection of earthy fables and anticlerical satires, was printed in England by William Caxton in 1484.