The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio (Folio Society Limited Edition)

BOCCACCIO, Giovanni (trans. Richard Aldington; illus. John Buckland-Wright). The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio. London: The Folio Society, 2007.

Large 8vo. Full red Nigerian "Wassa" goatskin, bound by Real Lachenmaier, Germany. Covers and spine blocked in gilt and navy blue with an abstract design by Jeff Clements incorporating motifs of medieval windows and male and female symbols. Green Morocco spine label. Top edge gilt. Satin ribbon marker. 712 pp. 20 aquatints by John Buckland-Wright throughout, including frontispiece. Housed in dark green solander case with gilt-titled spine, together with accompanying booklet The Happy Art of Narration: Readings of Boccaccio and the Decameron by Dryden, Coleridge, Hazlitt, Shelley, and Leigh Hunt. Deluxe Limited Edition. Limited to 1,750 numbered copies, this being number 1384.

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) wrote The Decameron in the years following the Black Death, which devastated Florence in 1348 and killed, by some estimates, more than half the city's population. The plague provides the novel's frame: seven young women and three young men, having survived the initial outbreak, retreat to a secluded villa outside the city and agree to pass the following ten days telling stories, one hundred tales in total, ranging across every register from bawdy comedy to tragic romance to sly social satire, told by narrators whose personalities and preoccupations gradually differentiate themselves across the collection.

This translation, by Richard Aldington (1892–1962), renders Boccaccio's fourteenth-century Italian into readable modern English without sacrificing the wit and structural elegance of the original. The twenty aquatints by John Buckland-Wright (1897–1954), the New Zealand-born printmaker celebrated for his technically masterful and sensuous engravings, were produced for the Folio Society's earlier editions of the text and are reproduced here with the fidelity that aquatint reproduction demands.

Near fine. Some extremely faint foxing to fore-edge of main volume, almost imperceptible. Accompanying pamphlet shows some marking to title card. Some rubbing to gilt titling on solander case spine. Internals clean and bright throughout; gilt remains bright and bold to main volume. The set otherwise presents beautifully.

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Catalogue Number: HH000659