1783 Rare Italian Book set - Jerusalem Delivered - La Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso.
(description)
Author : Torquato Tasso
Title : LA GERUSALEMME LIBERATA.
Language : Text in Italian.
Publisher : Parigi (Paris) Presso G. C. Molini Libritio rue du Jardinet, 1783. Complete in two volumes.
Size : 8" X 6"
Pages : Volume I, xii + 326 pages. Volume II, 333 pages.
Binding : Good original full calf leather binding (hinges worn but still tight, overall scuffed and worn - as shown) under a protective mylar cover .
Content : Very good content (bright and tight, rare staining and foxing, name of a previous owner on upper margin of title pages - as shown).
Illustrations: Complete with the 2 illustrated title page and the frontis.
Estimate : (USD 250 - USD 350)
The book : A rare 18th century Italian book set published in Paris of Jerusalem Delivered, also known as The Liberation of Jerusalem (Italian: La Gerusalemme liberata), is an epic poem by the Italian poet Torquato Tasso, first published in 1581, that tells a largely mythified version of the First Crusade in which Christian knights, led by Godfrey of Bouillon, battle Muslims in order to take Jerusalem. The poem is composed of 1,917 stanzas in ottava rima (15,336 hendecasyllabic lines), grouped into twenty cantos of varying length.
The author : Torquato Tasso (11 March 1544 – 25 April 1595) was an Italian poet of the 16th century, best known for his poem Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered, 1581), in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade, during the Siege of Jerusalem. Tasso suffered from mental illness and died a few days before he was due to be crowned on the Capitoline Hill as the king of poets by the Pope. His work was widely translated and adapted, and until the beginning of the 20th century, he remained one of the most widely read poets in Europe.