Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

Getting rid of the French 

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[BANDETTINI, Teresa et al]. PER L'AVVENIMENTO DI FRANCESCO IV al solio estense. Accademia di lettere. Modena: co’ tipi Soliani, 1814. £650

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SOLE EDITION. 4to, pp. xliii, [i] blank, 99, [1] blank; aside from very occasional light spotting, clean and crisp throughout; uncut and in part unopened in contemporary coloured pastepaper boards; very light wear, but still a lovely, wide-margined copy.

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A superb copy of this collection of verses published to mark the re-establishment of the Duchy of Modena, and the accession of Francesco IV, after the dissolution of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, presented by the fellows of the Accademia Ducale di Scienze e Belle Lettere of the city, with a preface by its president, the lawyer, politician, and administrator Luigi Rangoni (1775-1844), who may, in praising the ‘ristabilimento dell’ordine sociale e della pubblica tranquillità’, have forgotten that he was made a knight of the Order of the Iron Crown in 1806 by Napoleon. The volume does though mark the first publication of the academy after its restoration by Francesco, after its Napoleonic merger with the Società d’Arti mecchaniche and the Società Agraria to form an Atheneum, albeit one that never met.

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The volume opens with two lengthy odes by Giovanni Moreali, perpetual secretary of the academy, and continues with other contributions by office-holders and other notable figures, ranging from sonnets to more substantial poems by the likes of Giuseppe Molza (1782-1861), the famous improvisatrice Teresa Bandettini, and others, with a closing sonnet by Rangoni.

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Francesco was to rule over the Duchy of Modena until his death in 1846. The enthusiasm with which he was greeted in the present volume may have been misguided; his reputation is of a tyrannical ruler, with a particular hostility towards any form of liberal reform. 

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OCLC records copies at Harvard and Chicago only. 

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