Il Decamerone di M. Giovanni Boccaccio di nuovo emendato secondo gli antichi esemplari, per giudicio et diligenza di piu autori. (with:) SANSOVINO (Francesco). Dichiaratione di tutti i vocaboli.

£4,750 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A handsome copy of the third Giolito edition of Boccaccio’s Decameron, from the library of a former Bletchley Park codebreaker and Monuments Man, Major Giles H. Robinson (1913-1987). Attractively printed, and illustrated with woodcuts designed especially for this edition - Giolito’s ‘second set’ (Mortimer, 71) - Giolito dedicates the work to the Dauphine of France Catherine de Medici, ‘ornament of Florence, and of all great women’, and writes how the work is both appropriate and was originally intended for, a female readership: ‘che materie piacevoli contiene, per la maggiore parte di Donne per cagion di Donne dal suo Auttore fu composto’. Giolito’s dedication to Catherine here, and to other significant female figures in other works that issued from his presses, has been understood as evidence of the printer’s self-promotion as ‘a devoted defender of women’ in the context of the querelle des femmes debates of the early modern period (Dialeti, p.6). That Boccaccio’s writing appealed to women “was a literary commonplace originating in Boccaccio himself, who dedicated De mulieribus claris to Andrea Acciaiuoli, Countess of Altavilla, and addressed both the Decameron and Fiammetta to women readers. In the sixteenth century, editions of Boccaccio’s works were often dedicated to women or addressed to female readers. …At the same time, Boccaccio’s works, especially the Decameron, were broadly regarded as pernicious readings for women” (Dialeti, p.20). Following Giolito’s introduction

• Binding: Hardcover

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