Los Siete Libros de la Diana : dirigidos al muy Illustre señor don Iuan Castella de Villanoua, señor de las baronias de Bicorb, y Quesa. Añadio se agora historia el Alcida y Sylvano compuesta por el mesmo autor
by MONTEMAYOR, Jorge de
- Used
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- See description
- Seller
-
Lebanon, New Jersey, United States
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About This Item
Anvers [Antwerp]: Iuan [Juan] Stelsio, 1561. First Antwerp edition, fifth edition overall. 12mo. Woodcut device on title and recto of final leaf. [3], 230, [2] ll. COLLATION: A-T12 V4. Contemporary vellum; A8 trimmed with some loss to text at fore-edge margin due to misaligned imposition, running titles trimmed First Antwerp edition, fifth edition overall, of this foundational and wildly popular pastoral prose romance and Shakespeare sourcebook, written in Spanish by the Portuguese author Jorge de Montemayor (c.1520-1561). First published in 1559 in Valencia, Diana "holds the distinction of being the first fully developed Iberian romance of the sixteenth century" (Cambridge History of Spanish Literature, 2005, p. 187). Diana was one of the most popular works of early modern Europe, running to dozens of editions in Spanish throughout the second half of the 16th century, as well as numerous translations. The first English translation, by Bartholomew Young, was published in 1598. Dianas plot, a complicated rustic masquerade set in a fantastical Arcadian world populated by nymphs, giants and other mythical creatures, centers on the shepherd Sireno's search for a cure to love's misery, occasioned by the beautiful shepherdess Diana who has forsaken him to marry another shepherd, Delio (ibid). Works inspired by Diana include Sidneys Arcadia, Cervantes first prose work, La Galatea (Cervantes also mentions Diana in Don Quixote), and Shakespeares Two Gentlemen of Verona, which borrows its cross-dressing love-triangle plot from Felismenas tale. "The ultimate source of the play was Diana by J. de Montemayor, which Shakespeare could have read in a French translation (1578), or possibly in B. Yonge's English version, not published until 1598" (Muir, The Sources of Shakespeare's Plays, p. 17). All 16th-century editions of Diana are rare. The Pirie copy of the 1598 Young translation brought $14,000 hammer at his sale (Sothebys, New York 2015, lot 597). The last copy of this 1561 Antwerp fifth edition to appear at auction was in J. Peeters-Fontainass renowned collection of Spanish books printed in the Spanish Netherlands, sold at his 1978 sale (Sotheby's, London, lot 368, £750 hammer). Peeters-Fontainas located only his own copy and that in the British Library. A recent OCLC search confirms one copy at the British Library.REFERENCE: Peeters-Fontainas 804; Palau 177943
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Details
- Bookseller
- Bull's Head Rare Books (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 311
- Title
- Los Siete Libros de la Diana
- Author
- MONTEMAYOR, Jorge de
- Book Condition
- Used
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First Antwerp edition, fifth edition overall
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Publisher
- Iuan [Juan] Stelsio
- Place of Publication
- Anvers [Antwerp]
- Date Published
- 1561
- Keywords
- Shakespeare
Terms of Sale
Bull's Head Rare Books
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including original shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
Bull's Head Rare Books
Biblio member since 2021
Lebanon, New Jersey
About Bull's Head Rare Books
Bull's Head Rare Books was established in 2020 by Alex Obercian after more than a dozen years in the New York City book trade. BHRB deals in rare books and manuscripts in all fields, with specialties in literature, bookbindings, architecture, photography, science and medicine and country-life pursuits — gardening, farming and landscape design.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- 12mo
- A duodecimo is a book approximately 7 by 4.5 inches in size, or similar in size to a contemporary mass market paperback. Also...
- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...
- Device
- Especially for older books, a printer's device refers to an identifying mark, also sometimes called a printer's mark, on the...
- Recto
- The page on the right side of a book, with the term Verso used to describe the page on the left side.