Scelta di Lettere e di Opuscoli . . .Tradotti dall’Inglese. Bound with: Opera Politiche di Beniamino Franklin. Nuovamente Raccolte e dall’Originale Inglese Recate nella Lingua Italiana.
Milano, 1774 & Padova, 1783. Nella Stamperia di Giuseppe Marelli, Item #960 Together two volumes in one. 8vo. 190 x 130 mm., [7 ½ x 5 inches]. 99pp.; viii, 287 pp. Wanting the portrait in the second volume. 19th century leather spine and tips, speckled paper boards; binding shows some scuffing to the leather. Old paper repair to the half-title of the second work, probably from the removal of a inscription before the set was bound in the 19th century; former owners hand written name and address on the front free endpaper, ca. 1912. With faults a very good, sound copy. The second work is a translation from English into Italian by Pietro Antoniutti of Franklin’s Political, Miscellaneous, and Philosophical Pieces, published originally in London in 1779 and edited by Franklin’s friend Benjamin Vaughan. The letters are organized in three parts. The first part include Franklin’s letters leading up to the Revolution in 1776. The second part includes his letters written during the War and the final part discusses his views on provincial politics as it pertains to the various colonies. This work provides a view into the evolution of Franklin’s thinking as circumstances changed in America and became the basis for his relationship with jurists and political thinkers in Italy, struggling to help their country develop into a nation state. Franklin’s Opera Politiche was widely read in Italy and was reviewed in the Giornale Letterario published in Venice in 1783.
First Italian Editions. The theories on electricity proposed by Benjamin Franklin were widely discussed by his peers in Italy, where the last edition of his book on the subject (1774) was translated into Italian by the Abbot Carlo Giuseppe Campi, a close associate of Volta. Italy was the first European country to embrace Franklin’s scientific writings and many of his experiments were replicated by his Italian colleagues, including Galvani and Volta. His understanding of the connection between the actions of the Leyden Jar and voltaic cell helped advance the theory of electrical transmission and served as a stepping stone to Volta’s invention of the continuous flow of electrical energy. This work was reviewed in the Florentine periodical Novelle litteraria by G. Lama in 1775, the Giornale de’ letterati d’Italia published in Modena in 1774 and in the Gazzetta letteraria published in Milan in 1774.
Paul Leicester Ford, Franklin Bibliography nos. 321, 343. Antonio Pace, Franklin in Italy, pp. 415 no. 12 and 418 no. 49.
Price: $2,000.00