Il secolo d'oro.

Milano: Giovanni Giuseppe Destefanis, 1815. First edition, signed.. Very Good. Octavo (23 cm); [2], 44 pages. Signed by the author on verso of title page, with a brief hand-written note in apparently the same hand at the base of page 56. Pages untrimmed. In red and green woodblock-printed wraps in the style of Remondini paper designs. References: Gamba 2533; DBI volume III.

The prolific librettist Angelo Anelli (1761-1820) wrote nasty, unbridled satires that tended to draw down disdain from his contemporaries (Foscolo hated him) and censorship from the authorities. Over a seven-year period (1811-1818) he produced periodical installments of a Juvenalian satire in ottava rima, challenging the entire literary establishment of his time. The parts were only collected into book form in an edition printed in Naples in 1820, the year of Anelli's death. Milan imprints of the individual parts, signed by the author, are rare.

Gamba notes Anelli's alienation from the good taste of his contemporaries, but concedes that future readers "will not deny the author's originality, festivity, and good use of salt and glitter.