Il Memoriale della lingua estratto dalle scritture de' migliori e più nobili autori antichi ; ridotto in ordine d'alfabeto

Book Description

Venice: Giovanni Battista Ciotti, 1602. First edition. Reference: Bruni & Evans, 4042; Fontanini I,80 ("il primo Vocabolario pieno e metodico"); Gamba 2757 (1617 ed.); Vinciana 3839 (1656 ed., "uno dei migliori vocabolari italiani pubblicati prima della Crusca."). Folio (31 cm); [12], 524, 395 [i.e. 375], lacks two unnumbered leaves errata at end. Title page in red and black. Printer's device on title page and colophon. Text printed in two columns. Woodcut head pieces; initials. Rebacked in period style, retaining eighteenth-century boards in flecked calf gilt with double fillets. Title page and colophon a little worn, but contents generally clean and bright. Few marginal worm trails. Discrete 19th-century library blindstamp on title page, colophon, and few other leaves. The first methodical Italian dictionary based on literary examples, il Memoriale della lingua appeared ten years before the Accademia della Crusca issued its famous dictionary. Gamba points out that Pergamino, who was a friend of Tasso, utilized examples that the Crusca missed, such as Tasso's dialogues, Guido Cavalcanti, Ludovico Dolce and Gian Giorgio Trissino. The first edition is quite scarce, absent from recent auction records, with copies scattered in a few important libraries. Gamba himself saw only the second edition of 1617. A third edition appeard in 1656.

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