Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

Italianising a monumental French achievement 

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[ENCYCLOPÉDIE MÉTHODIQUE]. DIZIONARIO DI BELLE LETTERE composto dalli signori d’Alembert, Diderot, Marmontel ed altri letterati di Francia per l’Enciclopedia Metodica tradotto e regolato ad uso d’Italia. Tomo I [-III] In Padova: Nella Stampera del Seminario. Appresso Tommaso Bettinelli, MDCCXCV [1795]. £650

 

FIRST EDITION IN ITALIAN. Three volumes bound in one, 8vo, pp. [iv], 305, [1] blank; [ii], 301, [3] blank; [ii], 307, [1] blank; text in double columns; some spotting and foxing throughout, and occasional marginal staining; paper repair to lower corner of Q1 of volume three affecting a few letters; in near-contemporary vellum-backed carta rustica, gilt skiver lettering-piece on spine; some wear and dustsoiling.

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Rare Italian adaptation of the section of Panckoucke’s monumental Encyclopédie Méthodique devoted to grammar and literature, which had first appeared in Paris and Liège in 1782.

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The Avviso highlights the importance of the Encyclopédie Méthodique, and the immediate demand for it to be made available to Italian readers, with the literary and rhetorical part being of particular interest, as ‘una copiosa e scelta raccolta di Trattati su qualunque articolo dell'Arte, e su gli oggetti più interessanti dell'Eloquenza e della Poesia, esaminati prima secondo i loro principi, intrinseci, originarj, e naturali, e poi secondo i rapporti ai diversi popoli Orientali, ai Greci, ai Romani, e alle Nazioni più colte di tutti i tempi, coi giudizj, analisi, e confronti dei più celebri autori antichi e moderni’. Of course, there is a good deal of the original devoted to the minutiae of French grammar; these entries are omitted ‘in order not to cool the fervour of readers rapt by the aspect of great and important matters, nor to lead them too far from the heart of the art common to all people’; even though to the French reader these may seem great ‘agli occhi d’una Nazione che tutto pregia in se stessa’, they might be rather dull to a foreigner. However, some notes on Italian grammar have been added, ‘onde questo Dizionario nato e portato a tanto perfezione in Francia, paresse in qualche modo proprio dell’Italia’.

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Further editions appeared in 1816 (Venice), and 1847 (Palermo). 

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Adams G53-G55; OCLC records two copies outside Italy, at the Institute of Information Science in Ljubljana and the Biblothèque de Genève. 

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