Life of Dante.

BOCCACCIO, Giovanni.

$175.00

Item Number: 146440

Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1904.

First edition of the first formal biography of the father of the Italian language. Small folio, original publisher’s half vellum with gilt titles to the spine. One of two hundred and sixty-five copies printed for Houghton Mifflin and Company and stated on the colophon, this is number 18. In very good condition, bookplate to the front pastedown.

Dante Alighieri was an Italian poet, writer, and philosopher who wrote what is widely considered the most important work of Italian literature and one of the greatest works of world literature, 'Divine Comedy.' His implementation of language and vernacular in literature was instrumental in establishing modern-day standardized Italian and in bringing Italian to the forefront of literary language in western Europe for several centuries.