Il congresso di Citera. Calamo ludimus.: Edizione sesta accresciuta del Giudicio di Amore sopra l'istesso congresso

London , 1763. Sixth edition, the first to include the Giudizio d'Amore.. Fine. Octavo (17 cm); 104 pages. Typographical vignette on title page, and typographical headpiece and initial on A4. In three-color woodblock-printed decorated wraps, A wide-margined, largely unblemished copy. Reference: Melzi, Dizionario di opere anonime e pseudonime, I, 243.

One of the defining voices of the Italian enlightenment, Francesco Algarotti traveled widely through the courts and capitals of Europe, associating with its principal scientists, artists, and intellectuals. In Great Britain, he was made a member of the Royal Society, engaged with Alexander Pope, and frequented the salon of Mary Wortley Montagu and John Hervey. (Montagu became the centerpiece of Algarotti's popular "Newtonianismo per le dame.") The work presented here, first published in 1745, was frequently reprinted and translated into several languages. It is a novelistic essay (or a didactic novel) on love and courtship in the various nations of Europe and elsewhere. (The experts meet on the Aegean island of Cithera, home of Aphrodite.) Algarotti continued to revise and expand the text through its various editions, until this, the London edition of 1763, which is considered definitive. All editions remained anonymously published until the Paris edition of 1768,