Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

A short history of country pursuits 

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SERTOR, Gaetano. SULL' ANTICA ORIGINE DELL' AGRICULTURA, de’ giardini, della caccia, della pesca, e dell’ equitazione. Dissertazione istorica. In Torino:, MDCCLXXVI [1776]. SOLD​

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FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. [iv], XLIV; engraved vignette on title-page and initial; occasional light browning, but largely clean and fresh; in contemporary brown stiff wrappers, blank paper label on upper cover; some wear.

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First edition, rare, of this essay on the the origins of several aspects the rural economy, by the priest, historian, satirist and librettist Gaetano Sertor (1741-1805).

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Sertor, whose works range from opera libretti to a satire on the Papal Conclave of 1774-5 which led to his imprisonment in 1775 (perhaps not unsurprisingly not mentioned in the dedication to the present work), here draws on sources from Genesis and Homer through to Bossuet’s Discours sur l’histoire universelle to sketch an outline of the history of agriculture, gardening (from ancient Persia through to modern France), hunting and fishing (with reference to Xenophon’s Cynegeticus), and finally equestrianism. The dedication, to the Salò nobleman Antonio Olivari, notes that the local climate of Salò, which lends itself so readily to all of these activities, meant that it was only appropriate that a dissertation on their origins should be dedicated to a citizen of the town, on the West bank of Lake Garda. 

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Ceresoli, Bibliografia delle opere italiane, latine e greche su la caccia, la pesca e la cinologia, p. 484; Goldsmiths'-Kress no. 11413.11-1; OCLC records physical copies at Harvard, the University of London, and the Accademia del Georgofili. 

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