M. Cesarotti - Poesie di Ossian - 1819

The Ossian Poems

Translated by Melchior Cesarotti

Venice, at Giuseppe Orlandelli with the Picottiani types, 1819

4 volumes in-16° (mm. 160x105), pp. XII, 312; 367; 377, (7); 343.

Contemporary half-leather bindings with corners, marbled boards, smooth spines with gilt tassels and lines, edges gilt.

Beautiful edition of the famous Cesarotti translation, enriched with engravings (portrait of the author and off-text plates of Ossianic subject).

This is the most authoritative and fortunate Italian version of the Ossian Poems, the poetic cycle “discovered” (and largely invented) by James Macpherson. Cesarotti, with his elegant and sensitive style, made this key pre-Romantic text accessible to the Italian public, profoundly influencing Foscolo, Leopardi, Manzoni and the entire Italian Romantic literature.

The volumes contain the principal poems (Fingal, Temora, La Morte di Cuccullino, Cartone, Croma, La Guerra di Inistona, etc.) accompanied by critical notes and observations by the translator.

- A particularly curated edition of the early 19th century, with an iconographic apparatus.
- A fundamental work in the history of Romantic taste in Italy: the “Ossian phenomenon” marked the transition from Enlightenment rationalism to the sense of nature, melancholy, and the sublime.
- Cesarotti was one of the leading intellectuals of the Venetian Enlightenment, and his translation is considered a classic of Italian literature.

A specimen in good conservational state, with some natural signs of use and foxing typical of paper of the era. Bindings with some defects to the spine but solid and pleasant.

Rare opportunity to acquire one of the most beautiful and complete editions of Cesarotti’s Ossian translation in a small format, elegant with plates.