Passeggiata in Europa ovvero Storia Viaggi e Costumi. Alla Gioventii. Con Figure.
12mo, (1) ff, 240 pp, with lithograph title page and 8 further lithograph plates. Bound in original publisher’s printed brown wrappers, minor damage to spine, clean and fresh, and excellent and very genuine copy. With stamps (likely a bookseller’s) to head of cover and title page, ‘Rodi-Ferrario’.
Very rare first and only edition of this travel guide to Europe, written, as the title suggests, for young readers in a pocket 12mo format. The guide moves from tours of Italy and Switzerland all the way to Poland, Lithuania, and Turkey, as well as Great Britain, providing 8 lithograph plates of national costumes along the way.
The charming illustrations depict: a young woman of ‘Batz’ (Bath); a woman of Civita-Vechia, Romagna; a citizen of Seville; a young woman of Gaeta, Two Sicilies; a boatman from Le Havre, a woman of Oberhash (Switzerland); the Vizier of Constantinople; and finally a female Athenian. The commentary passes from the historical to contemporary details of travel between major destinations, and occasional remarks of art-historical interest. Florence is noted to contain (in the same breath) the sepulchers of Galileo, Aretino, Machiavelli, and Alfieri, the latter having been sculpted by Canova (p 72).
England, Scotland and Ireland are noted very much in passing: although the empire stretches ‘to the Ganges’, the islands themselves are accorded little interest. The guide does mention “the renown of the University of Oxford, the most learned in England” with no mention, however, of its more easterly counterpart.
* ICCU 1175063; unrecorded on OCLC.
Price: $975.00