Poesie della Contessa. . .tra le Pastorelle Arcadi Lesbia Cidonia.
Bergamo: Dalla Stamperia Mazzoleni, 1820. Item #1455 8vo. 205 x 130 mm., [8x 5 ¼ inches]. [vi], 208, [vi] pp. Illustrated with a portrait designed by N. Bettoni and engraved by Rasos. Original yellow paper wrappers; soiled by dust, part of spine and edges expertly repaired with Japanese paper. “Bella Edizione, Molto Raro”. First edition, curated by the authors nephew Giovanni Mosconi and with an elegy and short biography by Saverio Bettinelli, which was recited before the l’Accademia Virgiliana di Mantova. Paulina Secco Suardo was of a wealthy family, was extremely well educated in language and literature, and as a young women established a salon in Bergamo that attracted luminaries from all of Europe. The posthumous Poesie. . “is a work of classical flavour, shot through with mythical references. While much of it is conventional in style, there are interesting moments: the lines dedicated to the risk of shipwreck, which was, after all, a commonplace of eighteenth-century travel writing, or especially glimpses of Paolina’s sense of well-being” which appear throughout her poetry. For a detailed bibliographical note see Ferri cited below. Pietro Leopoldo Ferri, Biblioteca Femminile Italiana, p.,336. Letizia Panizza and Sharon Wood, A History of Women’s Writing in Italy, pp. 100, 113-14.
Price: $750.00