Dei delitti e delle pene.

Publisher: [Livorno: Tipografia Coltellini,] 1764

Stock code: 51433

Price: £27,500

First edition of undoubtedly the most influential work on criminal justice in the 18th century. Cesare Beccaria, Marchese Beccaria-Bonesana, a well-to-do Milanese professor of law and economics, had made many prison visits and was appalled at what he saw. His short book was immediately successful and widely influential in stimulating reform in many countries, including the nascent United States. "Beccaria maintained that the gravity of the crime should be measured by its injury to society and that the penalties should be related to this. The prevention of crime he held to be of greater importance than its punishment, and the certainty of punishment of greater effect than its severity. He denounced the use of torture and secret judicial proceedings. He opposed capital punishment, which should be replaced by life imprisonment; crimes against property should be in the first place punished by fines, political crimes by banishment; and the conditions in prisons should be radically improved. Beccaria believed that the publication of criminal proceedings, verdicts and sentences, as well as furthering general education, would help to prevent crime. These ideas have now become so commonplace that it is difficult to appreciate their revolutionary impact at the time" (PMM). The true first edition, published anonymously and without place or printer, is scarce: only one copy appears in auction records in the past 35 years (Christie's, 3 Apr 1996, £8,500); there is apparently no copy in the British Library.

Quarto (214 × 157 mm), pp. 104. Contemporary marbled boards, edges uncut. Housed in a black flat back cloth solander box. Spine rubbed, a little foxing internally, stronger in quire K, an excellent copy in original state.