Gualtiero. Tragedia.

Florence: Insegna di Dante [printed by Felice Le Monnier], 1842. Edizione di proprietà dell'Autore. Good. Octavo (205 mm), 91, [3] pages. In original printed blue wraps. Pink paper backing . Well-read copy, with penciled ownership inscription of Patrizio Muschi, who was a prominent figure in literary circles in Siena in the middle of the 19th century. Occasional light foxing.

This five-act tragedy in verse by the19th-century historian and Dante scholar Pietro Fraticelli is an account of the tyrannical and brutal dictatorship exercised over Florence by Walter VI, Count of Brienne in 1342 and 1343. Walter agreed to be installed as "Signore" (Lord) of Florence by the city's wealthy oligarchs for a defined period of one year in order to stanch the city's financial hemorrhaging. Walter presented himself as a populist, and at his inauguration the dense crowd in the piazza shouted "for life! for life!" IN the event, Walter was a brutal and despotic leader, using his office to increase his own wealth, instituting policies of arrest, torture, and murder of political enemies, and plunder for his soldiers in the provinces. The action of the drama tells how Florence freed itself of Walter's tyranny.

The booklet was printed by the great Florentine publisher Felice Le Monnier (the firm is still active). This "author's edition" dated 1842 was followed by an edition bearing Le Monnier's standard imprint twenty years later. Le Monnier also published Ugo Foscolo's edition of Tasso's great epic, "Gerusalemme liberata," with historical notes by Pietro Fraticelli in appendix.

OCLC lists the Harvard copy alone in North America, and few scattered copies in Italy. (Inventory #: 6836)