Istorie di Niccolò Machiavelli, Cittadino e Segretario Fiorentino

Firenze: per Niccolo Conti, 1818 1818-1821, 10 volumes in 5 complete. First Edition. In Italian. Hard cover, Royal 8vo (measuring 6 x 9 ⅛ inches), in three-quarter red calf with marbled paper-covered boards, red speckled edges to the text block, the spine with Machievelli/Opere and Vol. Nos. in gilt, with restrained banding in gilt and blind to the spine. Brown craft pastedowns. The works were re-bound by the London firm of Proudfoot, 73 George Street, Euston Square, with their stamp upon the front pastedown of Vol. 1. Based on the address, Ramsden suggests a date circa 1840 for this binding. Printer states only 10 copies were printed on Royal paper. **Condition: Very Good Plus. Bindings are firm, with some scuffing to some of the marbled paper boards, their corners and edges, and along the spines. There is some loss to corners on the exterior. Inside, the work is remarkably clean and bright, with light foxing to prelims only. The foxing pattern suggests this may have been originally bound in ten individual cases. A very few pages remain unopened. There is the occasional stain or small imperfection within, but overall this remains handsome and very useable. **Collation: Each volume contains two of the ten complete works, with two title pages and tables of content per volume. The thirtyfive-line text features side notes. Contains 2 large fold-out illustrations/elevations. *Vol. 1- 2: (Volume Primo) with frontispiece portrait, dated 1818. Preface CL pp., Istorie Fiorentine, Libri Primo, Secondo,137 pp. Volume Secondo, dated 1820, Istorie, Libri Terzo - Settimo, 321 pp. [With owner's penciled reading date written at end of Jan. 26, 1891.] *Vol.3-4 (Volume Terzo) dated 1820. Istorie Fiorentine dal 1478 -1492. 390 pp. Account of the family de' Medici etc., Discorsi sopra di Tito Livi. Volume Quarto dated 1820, 379pp. including Il Principe [with penciled reading date annotation at end, Oct. 7, 1881.] *Vol.5-6 (Volume Quinto) dated 1820, 358pp. Including reforms of Pope Leo X, Dell'arte della Guerra. Volume Sesto, dated 1820, Discorso ovvero Dialogo Italiana, Toscana, o Fiorentina; Descrizione della Pesta, 1527. Commedie di N. Machiavelli, 354pp. *Vol. 7 and 8: Volume Settimo 7, dated 1821, Poesie,101 pp. Canti Carnascialeschi 372 pp. Volume Ottavo, dated 1821, Legazione and Spedizione 381 pp. *Vol. 9-10: Volume Nono, dated 1821. Legations to the Court of Rome, Siena, Pisa, the Court of France and more, 382pp. Volume Decimo, dated 1821. Facsimile document frontispiece fold-out. Legations to Venice, Cremona, etc. Lettere familiare, Le Mente di un Uomo di Stato.***The influential early nineteenth-century Italian bibliographer, Bartolommeo Gamba da Bassano lists this work with a lengthy note in his Serie dei Testi di Lingua (1839). He applauds the editor, Conti, with providing an extensive and informative Preface, running to one hundred and fifty pages, which " gives an account of [Conti's] careful attention to free the work from inferior writings, which with little criticism had been attributed to Machiavelli, and of the Letters which are of no importance." He goes on: "Furthermore, the materials are given more just distribution, and the best variants to be found in the various codices examined by him. Finally, he published forty two familiar Letters and other documents extracted for the first time from various libraries…Even after all this, the collection was much neglected, nor can it be said that even this one offers the collection of all the works of the Florentine Secretary [Machiavelli] emphasized in a way truly worthy of such a great man." (Note, p. 197.)***The ownership ink signature of Edith Coleridge (1832-1911) is written in old ink upon the front fly of the first volume of this 5 volume set.*** Edith was the granddaughter of the British Romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. She was perhaps best known as the editor of "The Memoirs and Letters of Sara Coleridge " (1873), her mother. [The letters included in "Memoirs" do justice to the remarkable mind of Sara. While not formally educated herself, Sara spoke a number of languages, including Latin, French, Italian and Spanish, and helped fund her brothers' educations by working as a translator beginning in her late teens. (see Edith Coleridge's biographical sketch in Memoirs and Letters.) Sara was also the anonymous author of a book of fantasy, "Phantasmion" published in 1837 (See our item for sale number GOTH 8224), said to have been influential on future fantasy writers. **The 10,000-volume Coleridge family library, shared between various relatives of the greater Samuel Taylor Coleridge family and his descendants, was broken up and sold in a series of auctions beginning in the 1990's and later at a Sotheby's London sale on 13 December 2007. Lot 56 at the latter auction consisted of 92 works, including others with Edith Coleridge's signature on the ffep. of the initial volume of a multi-volume set. While this particular title is not mentioned in that auction listing, it is presumably related, there being other Italian works mentioned. Her signature is also illustrated in that catalog. ***STC has been said to have been influenced by Machiavelli's "The Prince" in the development of a realpolitik counterweight to his early utopian-republican, egalitarian political thinking. (see Linda Reesman.) He and his friends the poet Robert Southey, William Wordsworth and others attempted to live out this ideal known as the "Pantisocracy" experiment as young men.**Literature: Gamba da Bassano, Serie Dei Testi di Lingua e di Altre Opere Importanti nella Italiana Letteratura (4th edit., 1839) No. 632, p.197. On Proudfoot bookbinders: see Ramsden (1987) p. 118, Cowie's Bookbinder's Manual (7th edit., 1852), p. 137. Sotheby's London sale catalog, 13 December 2007: "English Literature, History, Children's Books and Illustration," see Lots 55 and 56. Linda Reesman, Coleridge Bulletin New Series14, Autumn 1999, pp.80-86. OCLC 1129307139. Rare.. Signed by Edith Coleridge. First Edition, (Not the Limited Edition). Hard Cover. Very Good Plus.