BROWNING, Elizabeth Barrett; SIM, William A. (preface). Casa Guidi Windows … Florentine Illustrated Edition.

'The World Has No Perdition, If Some Loss'

BROWNING, Elizabeth Barrett; SIM, William A. (preface). Casa Guidi Windows … Florentine Illustrated Edition. Florence: Giulio Giannini & Son. 1926.

4to. Contemporary binding in imitation of vellum, upper board handsomely lettered in a calligraphic hand in red and black with two-line initial decorated in blue, green, brown, yellow, and red, leather ties, blue patterned endpapers; pp. 98, with photographic frontispiece and 14 ff. double-sided photographic plates; text within dashed yellow borders; spine chipped with small area of loss at foot (c. 10 mm), corners chipped and worn; uniform light toning and mild browning at head; nonetheless a very good copy.

First edition thus of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem on the early days of the Risorgimento as observed from Casa Guidi, the Florentine house she shared with Robert Browning from 1847 until her death in 1861.

Barrett Browning’s rousing poem on the Florentine struggle for independence was first published in London by Chapman and Hall in 1851, with a partial translation into Italian published in Florence in the same year. George Eliot recalled reading it ‘with great delight’, and John Ruskin ‘feverishly studied Casa Guidi Windows in anticipation of talking to [Elizabeth Barrett Browning]’ in 1852 (The Brownings’ Correspondence 23).

This is seemingly the first edition of Casa Guidi Windows in English to have been published in Italy; solo editions of the poem had previously appeared in 1901 (London and New York: John Lane) and 1909 (London: John Lane). We have found little information on William A. Sim, author of the preface, but he appears to have had preexisting ties to the Giannini publishing house, having contributed a preface to Old Pictures in Florence (1923), published as part of Giannini’s Post-card Library series.

The handsome plates comprise photos of the Uffizi, the Ponte Vecchio, and other Florentine landmarks, as well as striking twentieth-century illustrations of Giotto and Michelangelo (unfortunately unattributed) and reproductions of Giotto’s portrait of Dante, Dolciati’s painting of Savonarola’s execution, Cimabue’s Madonna at Santa Maria Novella, and more.

Armstrong, p. 151; Barnes E435.

SKU: 2126029