[Rarebooks] fa: VINCENZIO MARTINELLI - ISTORIA CRITICA DELLA VITA CIVILE 1752 - Inscribed Presentation Copy

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, June 6. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/ph23o5k

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


Vincenzio Martinelli: Istoria Critica della Vita Civile. Londra [London]: per Giorgio Woodfall a Charing-Cross, MDCCLII [1752]. FIRST EDITION. Large 4to (29.5 x 24.5 cm) in full period calf, spine compartments decorated in gilt; [12], 311, [1] pp.; woodcut vignettes, engraved portrait frontispiece. ESTC T83326.

PRESENTATION COPY, inscribed as a gift from the author on the title-page: "Dono Dell' Autore 1763." This copy extra-illustrated with a handsome engraved portrait frontispiece by Bartolozzi after Cipriani, possibly supplied from a later edition. Binding with some early scuffing and modest wear, front and rear hinges a little tender, professionally repaired/reinforced; some dust-soiling to the top edge of the text block, occasional scattered spotting, mostly light, a bit heavier on a few leaves; one early penciled correction in the margin; otherwise quite clean and fresh, securely bound. Contemporary armorial bookplate of Ambrose Isted, Esq. (1717-1781) affixed to the verso of the title-page. A unique and handsome copy of a work that's rather uncommon in its own right: ESTC locates copies in only four U.S. institutions (Folger, Chicago, Texas, and Yale).

Vincenzio Martinelli was a Tuscan-born dilettanti and teacher of Italian to England's highborn and powerful. A leading light of the "London Italians" of the mid-eighteenth century, he moved in the foremost social, artistic, political and intellectual circles of that Enlightened Age, as evidenced by some of the names that appear here in the 6-page list of subscribers: Mark Akenside; Horace Walpole; Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield; John Carteret, Earl Granville; the Earl of Sandwich; Wortley Montague; Moses Mendez; Charles Townshend (to whom the volume is dedicated); etc. Martinelli did not inspire universal admiration, however. Samuel Johnson distrusted his Whig politics and Fanny Burney's view of him was decidedly mixed: "He has a most uncommon flow of wit, and with it the utmost bitterness of satire and raillery of ill nature. His vanity and self-conceit exceed every person's I ever saw; and far from endeavouring to conceal this weakness, he glories in it… He is an admirable story teller, if he could forbear  making himself the Hero of all his Tales…" (Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, vol. I, 1988). The first of three books that Martinelli was to publish, the Istoria Critica consists of eighteen essays on different aspects of contemporary social life, including education and the education of women, marriage, the family, poverty, the arts and sciences, the law, liberty, theatrical spectacles, etc.