Opere in versi e in prosa del Signor Conte Gasparo Gozzi Veneziano dedicate a Sua Eccellenza il Sig. Daniele Farsetti. Tomo primo [-sesto]

Six volumes, 8vo (215x160 mm). Author's engraved portrait as frontispiece (F. Bartolozzi), VIII, 232 pp.; 213, [3 blank] pp.; 213, [3 blank] pp.; 232 pp.; 162, [2 blank] pp.; 152 pp. Woodcut printer's device on title pages. Woodcut decorative initials and headpieces. Contemporary cardboards “alla rustica”, inked title on spines. Uncut with deckle edges. A flawless copy.

Rare first edition, authorized and partly edited by the author himself. It contains: Elettra tragedia, Medea tragedia, Isaccio rappresentazione scenica; Edipo tragedia, L'Antiochia, rappresentazione scenica, Marco Polo, rappresentazione scenica; Zaira tragedia, La Marianne tragedia, La forza de' Natali commedia; Rime; Rime piacevoli; Lettere. Gozzi's works were reprinted posthumously by A. Dalmistro in twelve volumes in 1794.

Gasparo Gozzi was among the leading exponents of the Accademia dei Granelleschi and achieved notoriety in the field of Dante studies with his Difesa di Dante (1758) written in polemic with S. Bettinelli. A very prolific author due in part to perennial financial difficulties (he wrote dramas, chicalatas for the Accademia dei Granelleschi, reports, burlesque verse, occasional poems, satires and letters), he personally edited two highly successful biweeklies, the Gazzetta veneta and the Osservatore veneto, and staged several comedies and tragedies at the Teatro Sant'Angelo, which he ran for years with his wife. He also received several public offices, including superintendent of printing and speaker for the reform of schools after the suppression of the Jesuits (1773). In 1777 he attempted suicide by throwing himself into the Bacchiglione torrent in Padua. When his wife died, he remarried the Parisian Sara Cénet, with whom he shared his last years in illness (D. Proietti, Gozzi, Gasparo, in: “Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani”, vol. 58, 2002, s.v.).

Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\TO0E\040313.

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