Il mattino, Il meriggio, Il vespro e La notte di Giuseppe Parini; (bound with) Scelta di canzoni de' piu' eccelenti poeti antichi, e moderni, compilata ... dal Padre Teobaldo Ceva.

N.p. ; Venice: N.p.; Leonardo e Giammario Basaglia, [1803?]; 1784. First edition(?). Very Good. 18 cm; Two titles bound together (Parini's "Poemetti" bound second). 559, [1 blank] ; 162 pages. Half title of second volume: "Poemetti di Giuseppe Parini." Bound in contemporary half vellum over patterned-paper boards. Leather label titled in gilt. Abrasion on upper board. Lower board dusty and somewhat discolored. Reference: Bustico, Bibliografia di Giuseppe Parini, #48.

Parini has been called "the greatest Italian poet of his day and the most complete representative of Enlightenment literature" (Cambridge History of Italian Literature). The poems collected here are his life's work. Parini published the first two poems, "Morning" and "Afternoon," in quick succession in 1763 and 1765. He intended to finish them with "The evening" and publish them all together under the title "The Day," as a single satirical poem illustrating the daily life of a young Milanese noble. But "Evening" never materialized, and Parini kept re-working "Morning" and "Afternoon". The manuscript for "Evening" grew so unwieldy that it split into two pieces, "Il Vespro" (evening) and "La Notte" (night). He never completed the work, and it was published posthumously. Writing in 1929, Guido Bustico gave priority of the completed text to an edition published in Venice in 1803, but concedes that this undated, unlocated edition is "from the very first years of the 19th century," and there is no evidence of priority in either case. All early editions were assembled from manuscripts in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, and they differ slightly from one another. Il Giorno is bound here with an anthology of Italian poetry.