Petite Parisian Pastor Fido
[GUARINI, Giovanni Battista.]
Il Pastor Fido.
‘In Parigi, appresso Tomaso Iolly, 1706’.
16mo (100 x 70 mm, horizontal chain lines), pp. 256; engraved title-page, 6 additional full-page signed engravings by Antonio Luciani, woodcut initials and head-pieces; final page slightly soiled, but an attractive copy in early nineteenth-century sheep (front free endpaper watermarked ‘1805’), spine gilt in compartments, raised bands, speckled edges; joints and corners worn, boards lightly rubbed; occasional later marginal annotations in pencil.
Scarce Parisian edition of Guarini’s immensely popular ‘pastoral tragi-comedy’, charmingly illustrated by Antonio Luciani.
Guarini’s Pastor fido (first published in 1590) follows the fortunes of Silvio and Amarilli, the last two beings on earth of immortal descent, and was a huge popular success all across Europe. The date of publication on the title-page has been varyingly interpreted as 1700 or 1706: the Taylorian Library records two quasi-identical editions of the same date, ‘with the same engraved title and plates … but with a completely different setting of the text’. The present edition can be distinguished by the fact that the woodcut ‘S’ to p. 3 has two flower-heads instead of four, and the text is considered ‘generally more carefully composed’ (Thomas, p. 97).
Thieme-Becker XXIII: 437; D.H. Thomas, An Annotated Checklist of the Works of Battista Guarini (2010). OCLC finds 4 copies in the US dated 1700 (Library of Congress, UCLA, University of Chicago, University of Minnesota), and 4 in the British Isles dated 1706 (Royal Holloway, Taylor Institution Library, Trinity College Dublin, University of Manchester).
