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156 un. leaves. Bound with : BOCCACIO, Giovanni. De claris mulieribus. (Strasbourg, Georg Husner, ca. 1474- 75). 83 un.leaves (without first blank). Two works bound together in one small folio volume (277 x 200 mm). Early 19th-century English binding in long-grain red morocco, covers entirely covered with rich gilt and blind tooling consisting of a wide frame divided into three bands delimited by gilt fillets with large corner motifs and a large, finely decorated central diamond, spine with raised bands decorated with fleurons and bearing the two titles in gilt letters, wide inner frame richly decorated with gilt motifs, endpapers and flyleaves of green tabis surrounded by a Greek fret with corner fleurons, gilt edges (bound by J. Faulkner, 8 Queen Street, Little Tower Hill).
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An interesting collection bringing together the first edition of De casibus virorum illustrium and the second edition of De claris mulieribus, both published by Georg Husner in the same year in Strasbourg.
1- De casibus virorum illustrium.
Goff, B708 ; Hain Copinger, 3338* ; Pellechet, 2480 ; CIBN, B-507 ; Delisle, 274 ; Polain(B), 705 (dates “before 1479”) ; IGI, 1765 ; Walsh, 122 ; Proctor, 352 ; BMC, I, 83; GW, 4430 ; ISTC, ib00708000 ; USTC, 743488 (dates 1479 as Polain does).
First edition of these 56 biographies composed in Latin prose by Boccacio at the end of his life.
Divided into 9 books De Casibus Virorum Illustrium presents the lives and fates of famous personalities from the Bible, from ancient mythology, historiography and even of Boccaccio’s own contemporaries. Boccaccio reconstructs the destinies of famous men, both ancient and contemporary, showing how a succession of tragic events led them from glory to utter ruin.
The publication of this book started a whole new literary genre that blossomed later. For example, Geoffrey Chaucer found the model for The Monk’s Tale from the Canterbury Tales or John Lydgate, his Fall of Princes.
2- De claris mulieribus
Goff, B 717 ; ISTC, ib00717000; GW, 4484 ; HC 3327* ; Pell. 2473; CIBN, B-314; Polain, 710 ; BMC, 183.
Second edition, shortly following the illustrated edition published in Ulm by Johann Zainer (1473).
This book, quickly translated into French (by Laurent de Premierfait) and German (by Heinrich Steinhöwel), had a profound impact on its era, inspiring both Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and Christine de Pisan’s 1405 work The Book of the City of Ladies. Boccaccio gives a broad and often provocative insight into medieval attitudes towards women at a time when the Renaissance elites were changing their view of women’s potential.
Slight foxing on the first leaf but a very fine copy.
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