M. Goldoni - Mémoires - 1787

MEMOIRS OF MR. GOLDONI, TO SERVE AS A HISTORY OF HIS LIFE, AND OF HIS THEATRE
Paris, At the Widow Duchesne's, 1787
Original edition in three octavo volumes

Copy in full morocco. Good state of conservation, wear and small losses to the binding. Interior fresh.

This sumptuous and rare original edition of the Memoirs of Carlo Goldoni, published in Paris in 1787 by the widow Duchesne, constitutes a literary and theatrical testimony of priceless historical value. The work opens with a superb frontispiece engraved by Le Bas after a drawing by Charles-Nicolas Cochin, immortalizing the features of the great Venetian dramatist, as well as the three volumes bound in their splendid period morocco binding, with richly gilt spines and morocco title and volume labels in blue leather.

The work takes on a particularly fascinating dimension due to its very genesis and its destiny intimately linked to the French court. Written in French by Goldoni during his late years spent in Paris, while he was pensioned by King Louis XVI and master of Italian for the daughters of France, these memoirs recount the tumultuous and brilliant life of the reformer of Italian comedy.

A savory and little-known anecdote surrounds the composition of this work: Goldoni, who had spent much of his life fighting against the conventions of the commedia dell'arte to impose written and psychological texts, began writing his memoirs at an advanced age, expressing himself in a French of high colour which he himself described as “without elegance and without pretension, but dictated by truth.” It is, moreover, thanks to the kind intervention of court notables and the repeated encouragement of his illustrious contemporaries that he agreed to deliver to the public the true account of his triumphs and reversals, thereby offering posterity one of the most vivid, witty, and endearing self-portraits of the Enlightenment.

This copy, of rare elegance, with red edges and interiors remarkably preserved despite some minor foxing, will particularly delight discerning bibliophiles and collectors passionate about the history of European theatre and 18th-century literature."