1932 The Pentamerone of Giambattista Basile

Description

First Edition, Illustrated, Leather Binding, Signed Binding

A first edition of this Neapolitan fairy tale collection by Italian poet and courtier Giambattista Basile. The first edition to be edited by Norman M. Penzer, a British independent scholar and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

Complete in two volumes, handsomely bound in crushed morocco by Bayntun Riviere.

Translated from the Italian by Benedetto Croce.

With a portrait frontispiece and contemporary map of Naples to Vol I, and eleven plates of title page reproductions to Vol II. Collated, complete. 

These stories were collected by Basile, published posthumously in the mid seventeenth-century, and later adapted by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. 

The collection includes the first literary European version of 'Cinderella', a variant of 'Snow White' called 'The Young Slave' and 'Pippo', a variant of 'Puss in Boots'. 

With the bookplate of Captain Richard Campbell to the verso of the front free endpaper. He served on submarines before becoming a specialist in hydrographic surveying, a skill which took him around the world including Antarctica aboard the HMS Endurance. During the Falklands War he led the conversion of deep ocean survey vessel HMS Hydra into a hospital ship, which transported wounded personnel to Uruguay. For this significant contribution, he was appointed OBE.