In Defence of Women
‘SANIVAL, Marchesa di’, pseud. [i.e. SALVANI, Fausto].
La difesa delle donne o sia risposta apologetica al libro detto Lo scoglio dell’umanità di Diunilgo Valdecio fatta dalla Marchesa di Sanival detta fra gli Arcadi Africia Melpea dedicata alla nobilissima dama la Baronessa Giacinta Verginia Vernazza … Siena, Luigi and Benedetto Bindi, 1786.
16mo, pp. xxvi, 156, [2, blank]; title within typographic border, copper-engraved arms at head of p. iii, typographic head- and tailpieces; small marginal loss to upper corner of pp. xv–xvi, a little very light foxing; a very good copy on blue paper in contemporary mottled sheep, spine gilt in compartments, red edges, sprinkled endpapers; some wear to extremities and abrasions to covers.
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La difesa delle donne o sia risposta apologetica al libro detto Lo scoglio dell’umanità di Diunilgo Valdecio fatta dalla Marchesa di Sanival detta fra gli Arcadi Africia Melpea dedicata alla nobilissima dama la Baronessa Giacinta Verginia Vernazza …
Very rare first edition, printed on blue paper, of this defence of women, written in response to an indecent satire entitled Lo scoglia dell’humanita, published under the Arcadian pseudonym Diunilgo Valdecio by Carlo Maria Chiaraviglio in 1774, which warned of the dangers to men posed by bad women.
This response, published under the pseudonym of the Marchesa di Sanival (complete with a similarly pseudonymous Arcadian name), is in fact the work of one Fausto Salvani. It offers a spirited defence of women in the form of pastoral poetry, in an attempt to show that women, rather than being predominantly temptresses intent on dragging men into a life of depravity and vice, are more likely to be models of rectitude as wives and mothers. The work is dedicated to the baroness Vernazza (1762–post 1821), wife of the philologist and antiquarian Giuseppe Vernazza, baron de Freney (1745–1822).
OCLC records a single copy, at UC Berkeley; Library Hub finds only a single copy of a later edition (1790) at the Bodleian.