Bembo, Pietro. Gli Asolani di messer Pietro Bembo. (Venice: Aldo Manuzio, March 1505)

First edition, first issue, with Bembo’s dedication to Lucrezia Borgia, dated from Venice, 1 August 1504. Printed as a quarto, but set to intentionally narrow (73 m🧔m) lines, allowing the outer margin to be trimmed down, as here and as in most copies, 💜to produce a slender leaf, corresponding to the proportions of the Aldine octavo series.

4to (195 x 122 mm). Italic type, 36 lines. collation: a-m⁸ n²: 98 leaves. Woodcut Aldine device on m8v, two initials with later decoration. (First leaf laid down at head and slightly browned, possibly supplied from another copy, a2 slightly stained at head, text on a3 slightly 💎rubbed, without final blank leaf n2.)

binding: Nineteenth-century half vellum over marbled boards (200 x 130 mm), flaꦬt spine gilt with brown morocco lettering- piece, red speckled edges.

provenance: Edward Percy Jacobsen, booklabel — Davis & Orioli, Catalogue of the first portion of the library of the late E.P. Jacobsen, London, 1915, lot 119, £3-3s — Charles W. Clark, The Library of Charles W. Clark (San Francisco, 1917), III, p.7. acquisition: Purchased from John Fleming, New York, 1968. references: UCLA 88; Aldo Manuzio tipografo 90; Edit16 4986; Renouard 48/1