La Vita di Torquato Tasso. Seconda Edizione Corretta ed Accresciuta.

The authoritative eighteenth-century biography of Tasso, expanded and revised, and the very book that sent Goethe back to rework his own tragedy on the poet's life.

The standard and most authoritative eighteenth-century life of Torquato Tasso, and the work that established Pierantonio Serassi's reputation as the pre-eminent scholar of the poet's biography and bibliography. A Bergamask by birth who spent the greater part of his career in Rome, Serassi built his scholarly name on documentary, source-driven biographical method, editing the works of Petrarch, Bembo and Molza among others; La Vita di Torquato Tasso was his magnum opus, deliberately conceived to displace the romanticised and unreliable earlier life by Giovan Battista Manso with an account grounded in Tasso's own letters and contemporary documents. First published in Rome in 1785 in two volumes, it was received with wide scholarly acclaim. Famously, Goethe read it during his stay in Rome in 1788 and was sufficiently struck by it to substantially rework his own tragedy Torquato Tasso in its light.

The present set is the Bergamo edition of 1790, printed by Locatelli in Serassi's own native city and explicitly announced on the title page as "seconda edizione corretta ed accresciuta". A generously revised and enlarged second edition, its principal addition is the substantial "Catalogo de' Manoscritti, dell'Edizioni e delle Traduzioni in diverse lingue delle Opere di Torquato Tasso" appended to the second volume, a systematic bibliographical census of Tasso's manuscripts, printed editions and translations across languages, which lends this edition independent value as a working bibliographical tool quite apart from the biography itself. Illustrated with a portrait frontispiece and further plates of Tasso at different ages, the set survives here in handsome contemporary vellum, sturdy and clean, and represents this important biography in its finest and most complete eighteenth-century form.

Text in Italian. Second edition. Two volumes, quarto. Vol. I: [xi], 284pp; Vol. II: [2], 292, [xcii]pp (the latter comprising the appended catalogue). Engraved portrait frontispiece and plates depicting Tasso at different stages of life, with engraved medal vignettes to both title pages. Contemporary full vellum, gilt-titled to brown leather spine panels. Bindings sturdy and well preserved, with only some soiling to the vellum; contents of both volumes generally fine, clean and bright throughout, with only sporadic markings. A beautiful and well-preserved set.

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Catalogue Number: HH000768