Item #16391 The Italian Novelists. Now First Translated Into English. Choicely Illustrated By E. R. Hughes. in Seven Volumes. W. G. . Straparola Waters, Giovanni Francesco, Giovanni Fiorentino, Trans.
The Italian Novelists. Now First Translated Into English. Choicely Illustrated By E. R. Hughes. in Seven Volumes
The Italian Novelists. Now First Translated Into English. Choicely Illustrated By E. R. Hughes. in Seven Volumes
The Italian Novelists. Now First Translated Into English. Choicely Illustrated By E. R. Hughes. in Seven Volumes
The Italian Novelists. Now First Translated Into English. Choicely Illustrated By E. R. Hughes. in Seven Volumes
The Italian Novelists. Now First Translated Into English. Choicely Illustrated By E. R. Hughes. in Seven Volumes
The Italian Novelists. Now First Translated Into English. Choicely Illustrated By E. R. Hughes. in Seven Volumes
The Italian Novelists. Now First Translated Into English. Choicely Illustrated By E. R. Hughes. in Seven Volumes
The Italian Novelists. Now First Translated Into English. Choicely Illustrated By E. R. Hughes. in Seven Volumes
The Italian Novelists. Now First Translated Into English. Choicely Illustrated By E. R. Hughes. in Seven Volumes

The Italian Novelists. Now First Translated Into English. Choicely Illustrated By E. R. Hughes. in Seven Volumes

Privately Printed for Members of the Society of Bibliophiles, 1901. Illustrations by E. R. Hughes. Limited edition of 26 copies. Half Leather to Marbled Boards.

Seven volumes; Complete which include The Facetious Nights of Straporola" Vol 1 – 4 and "The Pecorone of Ser Giovanni" Vol 5 - 7

The text is printed on Japanese Vellum paper and Triplicate Set of Illustrations: These plates by E.R. Hughes, in three states. Aquarelles, Tints and Japanese Proofs. All red-lettered tissue-guarded. [Three copies of each plate, one of which is in color]. Each book with a hand-colored frontispiece.

Original red half morocco and marbled boards, Spines titles/decorated in gilt, All edges gilt. Copy 'H' of 26 lettered copies, the St. Mark's Edition, printed on Japanese Vellum paper.

The bindings are tight and square. Text clean, light even toning. Bookplate on paste-down of each. Heavy wear to the boards; Corners are rubbed and spine bands have wear. Loss lower spine volume 1 and 7. Volume 7 has lost label. Volume one rubbed along left edge of spine.

Boards Worn, Interior Fine / No Dust Jackets As Issued. Item #16391

Giovanni Francesco (ca1480 -1557) was an Italian writer and fairy tale collector from Caravaggio, Italy.

He has been termed the progenitor of the literary form of the fairy tale. Charles Perrault borrowed most of his stories from Giovanni Francesco Straparola and Giambattista Basile. Straparola's main work is a two-volume collection, "Le piacevoli notti" (published in English as "The Nights of Straparola" or "The Facetious Nights of Straparola"), with 75 stories.

Modeled on Decamerone, it has participants of a 13-night party on the island of Murano, near Venice, tell each other stories that vary from bawdy to fantastic. It contains the first known written versions of many fairy tales.

The Ser Giovanni (14th century) work is a collection of 50 comic, tragic and licentious novellas. Contains elements later found in Shakespeare including the bond with a Jew for a pound of flesh and the wooing of a lady at Belmont.

For Victorian readers, some Straparola's fairy tales and riddles tested the limits of propriety, while other more realistic tales were judged to be scandalously lascivious. For this reason, Waters chose to translate the most licentious passages of the latter into French, rather than English.  Tellingly, Waters' translation would be re-published in 1906 by one of the most infamous pornographers of the early 20th-century, Charles Carrington, who openly marketed the tales as erotica.

Price: $165.00

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