Author: MARTINELLI (Vincenzio):
Title: Istoria Critica della Vita Civile.
Description: Londra: Per Giogrio Woodfall..., 1752. FIRST EDITION. 4to, 294 x 231 mms., pp. 12, 311 [312 blank], 19th century half calf, marbled boards, neatly rebacked at some stage, title in gilt on spine. With the "Milton,/ Peterborough" book label on the top margin of the front paste-down end-paper. The subscribers include Mark Akenside, Earl of Chesterfield, Moses Mendez and two other members of his family, the dedicatee Charles Townshend, and Horace Walpole. Martinelli (1702 - 1785) came to England in 1748 and this was the first of three books that he published in England, and, as E. H. Thorne records, "made his reputation as a man of letters, and was reprinted several times both in England and in Italy. It consists of nineteen chapters each dealing with one aspect of la vita civile; aspects ranging from education and the duties of family life, through industry, art, and science, laws and methods of government, to la vita felice, and it ends - inevitably for a foreigner in eighteenth-century England - with a chapter 'della liberta.'" Among the good and the great that he met was Charles Burney, whose daughter, Fanny, recorded in 1771, "He has a most uncommon flow of wit, and with it the utmost bitterness of satire and raillery of ill nature. His vanity and self-conceit exceed every person's I ever saw; and far from endeavouring to conceal this weakness, he glories in it, and thinks he but does himself justice in esteeming himself the head of whatever company he is in, and (openly) manifesting that he does so. He is not satisfied with priding himself that he speaks to the Great with sincerity, he piques himself upon treating them with rudeness." E. H. Thorne, "Vincenzo Martinelli in England: 1748 - 1744," Italian Studies (1956). ESTC T83326 locates 15 copies in these islands, Niedersachsische Staats- und Universitatsbibliothek - Gottingen and Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin in Europe; and Folger, Chicago, Texas, and Yale in north America. OCLC adds NYPL, Oklahoma,

Keywords: manners morality prose


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