M. Goldoni - Mémoires - 1787

MEMOIRS OF M. GOLDONI, TO SERVE AS A HISTORY OF HIS LIFE, AND OF HIS THEATRE
Paris, Chez la Veuve Duchesne, 1787
Original edition in three octavo volumes

Copy in full calf. Good condition with wear and small losses at the binding. Interior fresh.

This sumptuous and rare original edition of the Mémoires de Carlo Goldoni, published in Paris in 1787 by la veuve Duchesne, constitutes a literary and theatrical testimony of invaluable 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 playwright, as well as the three volumes bound in their splendid period calf binding, decorated with densely fleuronned spines and with title and volume labels in blue morocco.

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

An appetizing and little-known anecdote surrounds the composition of this work: Goldoni, who had spent much of his life fighting against the conventions of commedia dell'arte in order to impose texts written and psychological, began writing his memories at an advanced age, expressing himself in a French that was bright and colorful, which he himself called “without elegance and without pretension, but dictated by truth.” It is moreover thanks to the benevolent intervention of court personalities and the repeated encouragement of his illustrious contemporaries that he consented to deliver to the public the truthful account of his triumphs and reverses, thus offering posterity one of the most vivid, witty and endearing artist’s self-portraits of the Enlightenment.

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