Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

Slapdash but unrecorded 

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TOGNELLI, Pellegrino. ISTITUZIONI DI ARITMETICA MERCANTILE. Livorno: Nella Stamperia di Francesco Natali, 1793. £450

 

SOLE EDITION. 8vo, pp. [iv], [1], 6-7, 4-5. 2-3, 8-120; first gathering printed out of page order; browned throughout due to paper quality, especially to prelims, occasional annotations in a contemporary hand, and a few ink spots; in contemporary drab wrappers, spine somewhat worn and a few ink spots on lower cover.

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Sole edition, seemingly unrecorded, of this précis of commercial arithmetic by the Livorno mathematician Pellegrio Tognelli.

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Tognelli had published in 1782 a more extensive Corso di aritmetica mercantile (Livorno, Falorni), but it was thought necessary to provide a rather simpler treatment of the subject that was less scholarly. And so, ‘for those who wish to make use of his method, he has compiled in this short volume everything one needs at one’s fingerstips; he has written these Istituzioni to serve as a handbook of all the arithmetical operations that are necessary in day-to-day life, setting himself the goal of brevity and clarity’ (Avviso dello stampatore, translated). After a brief introduction to the rudiments of arithmetic, Tognelli applies them to the divisions of money,values and prices for grain, silver, gold, and pearls, the calculation of discounts, and, at length, rates of exchange, both within Italy and throughout Europe (of great importance in Livorno, which was the most important free port in Italy at the time).

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We have found no information about Tognelli, and there is little to suggest that there was in fact a clamour for this simplified book; the 1782 Corso appears only in four Italian libraries according to the OPAC SBN, and of the present work we can find not a trace. It is certainly not a refined production; in addition to the very cheap paper on which it is printed, the first gathering is somewhat eccentric, with page 6 being found on the verso of page 1, page 4 on the verso of page 7, page 2 on the verso of page 5, and page 8 on the verso of page 3. It is tempting to speculate that this was the only attempt made to print the book. The printer, Francesco Natali, is represented by fourteen titles in SBN between 1794 and 1802. 

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Not in OCLC, SBN, or KvK. 

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[ref: 2471 ]