The exceptionally rare first edition

MACHIAVELLI, Niccolo.

Historie di Nicolo Machiavegli cittadino, et segretario Fiorentino, al santissimo et beatissimo padre signor nostro Clemente Settimo Pontefice Massimo.

Rome: Antonio Blado, 1532.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #004079

25 March 1532. 4to (198 x 135 mm). [4], 5-179 [1] leaves (complete). Title page with printer's device. Signatures: [Latin cross]⁴ A-Y⁸. Bound in later limp vellum. Little age-toning internally, some marginal light waterstaining in places; 11 leaves (G2-H5) with excellent, unobtrusive paper repair, of what appears to have been a burn hole, close to upper inner corner of text block with loss (missing text supplied in fine pen); a few minor repairs to outer blank margins elsewhere. In all still a fine, wide-margined, crisp and clean copy. ----

FIRST EDITION, AND OF EXCEPTIONAL RARITY, of Machiavelli's Florentine History. This first edition of the "Istorie fiorentine" appeared shortly before Giunta's edition. Blado and Giunta had both received papal privileges for printing Machiavelli's works and were competing for the editio princeps. Blado's edition is significantly rarer than Giunta's. USTC catalog lists 11 copies in public libraries with only 3 copies outside Italy and the Vatican (Madrid/Spain, Oxford/UK and The Morgan Library NYC/USA). Blado's source was a "manuscript that has not been preserved ... in any case a good one ... perhaps equal to the best of those that have been preserved ... this edition deserves first place among the individual prints" (Gerber, transl.).
The Historie is "the first example in Italian literature of a national biography, the first attempt in any literature to trace the vicissitudes of a people's life in their logical sequence, deducing each successive phase from passions or necessities inherent in preceding circumstance, reasoning upon them from general principles, and inferring corollaries for the conduct of the future" (Encyclopedia Britannica).
After Machiavelli's death in 1527, there was a race to publish his remaining works, and fierce competition broke out between the Roman printer Blado and the Florentine printer Guinta to be the first to press. Although Giunta had obtained the consent of Machiavelli's heirs, the editions of the Florentine History by Blado and Giunta appeared almost simultaneously. Today, it is generally accepted that Blado's Roman edition of March 25, 1532, appeared two days before Guinta's. Some copies of Giunta's edition bear the date March 27, 1532 in the colophon, while others are dated March 16, 1532. It is possible that Giunta printed the wrong date (March 16) to convince the public that his edition was indeed the first.
Bibliography & References: EDIT 16 CNCE 64104; USTC 839312; Gamba 606; A.Gerber, Niccolo Machiavelli : 147 Faksimiles zur Illustration der Handschriften, Ausgaben und Übersetzungen seiner Werke II, 36, 1; Bertelli-Innocenti, Sec. XVI, 16. - Visit our website to see more images!

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