Lettere amorose portughesi. Frá una dama di Portogallo, et un Cavaliero di Francia. Trasportate dal portughese in francese, e dal francese in italiano. Per Narbonte Pordoni

12mo.  155 x 75 mm., [6 x 3 inches].  [12], 115 pp.  Illustrated with a woodcut vignette on the title-page, head- and tailpieces, and floriated initial letters.  Bound in contemporary brown calf; joints expertly restored, textblock tight within the binding.  This copy has two old manuscript ownership notes at the bottom of the title-page, one dated 1807.

Extremely rare first Italian edition, of these famous Portuguese love letters attributed to Marianna Alcoforado, a Franciscan nun who passionately fell in love with Noel Bouton, the Marquis of Chamilly, a military man whose seduction is documented in this series of eleven letters.  It was originally printed in Paris in 1669 and over the centuries has gone through well over one hundred editions in all European languages. 

Published anonymously, the extraordinary nature of these letters, five from Alcoforado and six from Bouton, has intrigued scholars for centuries.  Speculation as to who the nun was the subject of numerous articles and reviews.  But it was not until 1810 when Jean François Boissonade, the French historian, discovered Marianna’s name written in a copy of the first edition by a contemporary hand. “The veracity of this ascription has been placed beyond doubt by the recent investigations of Luciano Cordeiro, who found a tradition in Beja connecting the French captain and the Portuguese nun.”

In his article in the Encyclopaedia Brittanica Edgar Prestage writes of the passionate nature of Alcoforado letters:

“The letters to her lover which have earned her renown in literature were written between December 1667 and June 1668, and they describe the successive stages of faith, doubt, and despair through which she passed.  As a piece of unconscious psychological self-analysis, they are unsurpassed; as a product of the Peninsular heart they are unrivalled.  These five short letters written by Marianna to “expostulate her desertion” form one of the few documents of extreme human experience, and reveal a passion which in the course of two centuries has lost nothing of its heat.”

This Italian edition is very rare.  It is not cited in the Italian Union Catalogue; OCLC cites only the copy in the BnF and NUC cites the copy at the Library of Congress as the only copy in America. 

M. Pelaez, entry “Marianna Alcoforado” in Enciclopedia Italiana,  1929.  F. C. Green, “Who as the Author of the ‘Lettres Portugaises’.  The Modern Language Review vol. 21 No 2 (April, 1926), pp. 159-167.