Beccaria - Dei Delitti e delle Pene - 1794

ONE OF THE FUNDAMENTAL TEXTS OF LEGAL ENLIGHTENMENT — BECCARIA, 1794, UNDER A FALSE PLACE OF PRINTING
Interesting seventeenth- or eighteenth-century edition of Dei delitti e delle pene by Cesare Beccaria, bearing on the title page «London, 1794» and the note «New edition corrected and enlarged». London is a false place of printing: a probable attribution to Bassano, at the Remondini, is proposed to be considered a hypothesis and not a definitive typographic identification. Dated in the same year as the author’s death, this impression testifies to the enduring fortune of one of the foundational texts of European Enlightenment. At the center of the work are the critique of torture and the death penalty, the proportionality of sanctions, and the necessity of a justice grounded in reason rather than arbitrary power.

REASONS FOR COLLECTING / WHY TO BUY
SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY EDITION OF 1794 – A testimony to the editorial fortune of the treatise three decades after its first publication, with the same year as Beccaria’s death.
FALSE PLACE «LONDON» – A fictional typographic imprint that adds bibliographic interest to the edition, for which a probable Bassano origin, at the Remondini, is proposed.
A CLASSIC OF LEGAL THOUGHT – A decisive work in the debate on torture, capital punishment, and the limits of the punitive power of the State, central to Enlightenment collections and the history of law.

MARKET VALUE
Indicative antique appraisal: €350–400. The range accounts for the work’s interest, the eighteenth-century date, the false place of printing, and the described conditions, with later binding in cloth. This is an indicative estimate, not a documented auction result; any confirmation of the typographic attribution would allow for a more precise bibliographic identification of the edition.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION AND CONDITION
Later full brown cloth binding. Paper with some browning and natural foxing and occasional signs of use. Binding with light abrasions and wear, especially to the spine and edges. In ancient books with a multisecond history, there may be some imperfections, not always noted in the description. This listing contains AI Visuals. Please refer to the original photographs to verify the object’s actual condition. The images are an integral part of the description. Pp.: (2); 230; (4).

FULL TITLE AND AUTHOR
Dei delitti e delle pene.
London [false place of printing; probably Bassano, Remondini], 1794.
Cesare Beccaria.

CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE
Publishes anonymously in 1764, Dei delitti e delle pene placed at the center of European debate a radical question: what limits must the State respect when punishing? Beccaria reconnected criminal justice to social necessity and the protection of citizens, opposing the cruelty of punishments and arbitrariness in applying the law. Sanctions had to be proportionate to the crime, certain, and necessary, not bear the character of vengeance. The critique of torture showed the irrationality of a system that entrusted truth-finding to the accused’s endurance of pain. The discussion of capital punishment called its necessity and usefulness into doubt, while crime prevention was linked to the clarity of laws, education, and the certainty of sanctions. The numerous editions and translations made the treatise an international reference for the renewal of penal law. This 1794 impression documents the persistence of that interest at the end of the century.

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR
Cesare Beccaria Bonesana was born in Milan in 1738. He participated in Milanese Enlightenment circles, connected to the Academy of Fists, brothers Pietro and Alessandro Verri, and the journal Il Caffè. From this milieu of discussion and renewal, Dei delitti e delle pene emerged, published in 1764 and destined to earn him European fame. Alongside reflections on justice, Beccaria cultivated economic and administrative interests, taught cameral sciences, and held positions in the administration of the Austrian Lombardy. He died in Milan in 1794, the year shown on the front page of this edition.

PRINTING HISTORY AND CIRCULATION
>The editorial history of Dei delitti e delle pene is characterized, from the first appearances, by a rapid succession of editions, reprints, and translations. Corrections, additions, and different arrangements of the text accompanied the work’s dissemination, whose tradition also includes impressions with false or ambiguous typographic indications. This edition bears the imprint «London, 1794», with a fictitious place of printing, and presents itself as «New edition corrected and enlarged». For its actual provenance, Bassano is proposed, probably at the Remondini. This designation remains a hypothesis to be confirmed by comparing catalogued copies, typographic composition, ornaments, and signatures. The phrase «corrected and enlarged» is the one declared by the edition and does not itself imply direct intervention by the author on this specific impression.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES
Luigi Firpo, Le edizioni italiane del «Dei delitti e delle pene», in Cesare Beccaria, Dei delitti e delle pene, edited by Gianni Francioni, National Edition of Cesare Beccaria’s Works, vol. I, Milan, Mediobanca, 1984.
Marino Parenti, Dizionario dei luoghi di stampa falsi, inventati o supposti.
Gaetano Melzi, Dizionario di opere anonime e pseudonime di scrittori italiani.
General references for the study of the work and its editorial tradition, not attestations of the Bassano–Remondini attribution.