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BOCCACCIO, Giovanni.

[Decamerone, in English] The Modell of Wit, Mirth, Eloquence, and Conversation.

Framed in Ten Dayes, of an hundred curious Pieces, by seven honourable ladies, and three noble gentlemen. Preserved to Posterity by the renowned John Boccacio, the first refiner of Italian prose: and now translated into English.

The Decameron in English: second edition in English of volume I; first edition of volume II, as often. Boccaccio's Decamerone, composed between 1348 and 1351, a collection of one hundred novelle was hugely influential in England, its canonical status reinforced by the imitations of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dryden, Keats, and Tennyson, yet Boccaccio's masterpiece nevertheless came to the English language late, significantly later than the first translations into French, Spanish, Catalan, and German. The anonymous translator apparently worked from both the Salviati (1582) edition of the Decameron and Antoine Le Maçon's (1545) French version. He shows some uneasiness in presenting the Italian novelle to an English readership and amending a Catholic author for a Protestant audience. Moral applications are interjected between the brief summaries of the tales and the novelle themselves, and the names of some characters are anglicized or given in French forms. The translation has been attributed to John Florio, the translator of Montaigne, though questionably so. The bibliographical details of the book are puzzling. Copies of the first edition of the first volume are rarer than those of the second, and no second edition of the second volume was ever published. As Pforzheimer states, "There may well have been some delay in the printing of the first edition of the second volume, not only because Jaggard altered its format to quires of four". Jaggard perhaps printed a much larger edition of it than the first volume, anticipating that he could re-use the extra copies. The second volume has a separate title, The Decameron … The last Five Dayes, dated 1620, but the 1625 title page of the first volume is specifically worded as a general title for the whole work, implying that Jaggard intended the work to be issued thus, two volumes in one. Jaggard is best known as the printer, in 1623, of the first folio of Shakespeare's plays. No copy of the first edition of both volumes together in contemporary calf has come to market since the Bradley Martin copy in April 1990.

2 volumes bound in one, folio (274 × 170 mm), first volume gathered in sixes, second volume in fours. Contemporary dark calf, rebacked with original gilt spine laid down, red morocco label sometime added in second compartment, corners skilfully restored. Housed in a dark brown flat back cloth solander box. Titles within woodcut borders, the border to volume II composed of 6 woodcut medallions repeated as vignettes throughout both volumes, decorative woodcut head- and tailpieces and initials, typographic head- and tailpieces. Small ink ownership inscription of the English poet Martyn Skinner (1906-1993), dated 1935, to front free endpaper. Some wear and cracklure to the binding, first title just shaved at fore-edge margin and with small hole at centre not affecting text, remains of old ink (faded) over imprint, second title just shaved at head and fore-margin, a few trivial marks internally, a few small paper restorations to blank lower outer corners, overall a very good copy.

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