De le lettere familiari [...] volume primo [-secondo]

Two parts in one volume, 4to; (8), 176 pp. (*4, A-L8); (8), 272 pp. (+4, A-R8). With the Medici-Capello's coat of arms on the title-pages and 13 woodcut empty circles in the text, that should have been filled out with emblems. Contemporary limp vellum. Three entries of ownership on the title-page: ‘Domini Celsi Rosini caesenatis et Abbatiae S. Cruci', ‘Di Giuseppe Estense Malaspina', ‘Di Gio. Fran. Agoselli‘. The present copy has been annotated throughout by an old hand, who has corrected many misprints and wrong dates, probably using a copy of the first Aldine edition of the work.
Adams, C-742; Basso, p. 265; Edit 16, CNCE 9653; Index Aureliensis, 132.477; Quondam, p. 293; P. Camerini, Annali dei Giunti, (Firenze, 1963), II, p. 464, no. 10.
 
FIRST GIUNTA EDITION, second issue. In the first issue the dedications of both volumes of the first Aldine edition, printed respectively in 1572 and 1575, have been maintained: volume I was dedicated by Giovanni Battista Caro, Annibal's nephew, to cardinal Girolamo da Correggio (Rome, March 1, 1572); volume II, by Annibal's brother, Lepido, to cardinal Tolomeo Gallio (Rome, November 12, 1575). In the second issue the first quires of both volumes have been completely reset. In volume I was printed a new dedication addressed by Bernardo Giunta to Francesco Tiepolo (Venice, August 25, 1581), whereas the dedication to Tolomeo Gallio in the second was maintained. Besides that, are found new capital letters at the beginning of the text in both volumes as well as all wrong numbering of the first issue was corrected. After this first edition, Giunta reprinted Caro's letters in 1582, 1587, and 1591/2.
Volume I contains 200 letters, mostly dated from November 1537 to April 1551; volume II 265 letters, almost all dated from April 1551 to July 1566. The letters are disposed in chronological order, although not strictly. Among the major recipients are Benedetto Varchi, Luca Martini, Luca Contile, Francesco Maria Molza, Giovanni Guidiccioni, and Pier Vettori (cf. A. Gareffi, “La lettera uccide, ma lo spirito vivifica” (Paolo, II, Corinzi 3:7). L'epistolario di Annibal Caro: lettere, letteratura, letteralità, in: “Le carte messaggiere. Retorica e modelli di comunicazione epistolare. Per un indice dei libri di lettere del Cinquecento”, A. Quondam, ed., Roma, 1981, pp. 237-253).
In 1572 and 1575 Paolo Manuzio posthumous published the first edition of Caro's Lettere familiari. Of the 465 letters included in the collection only 29 had already been printed in earlier anthologies, e.g. that of the same Manuzio (1542), of Paolo Gherardo (1554), Ludovico Dolce (1554), and Dionigi Atanagi (1554). Caro, who for long time had refused to collect and publish his epistolary, at the insistence of Manuzio in 1555 eventually accepted to comply to the request. He then gathered all the original of his letters he could find, made a selection (e.g. discarding those written on the account of his patrons), and corrected them. He then charged his nephew Giovanni Battista to copy all the texts in one manuscript (called by him “registro”), and finally burned the originals “per levarmi da torno la confusion di tanti scartabelli”. This manuscript has been recently identified as the Italian codex 1707 of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (cf. A. Caro, Lettere familiari, A. Greco, ed., Firenze, 1957-1961, I, pp. XVII-XXV).
“The private letters of Annibal Caro collectively offer numerous insights into the literary, scholarly, artistic, and political life of mid-sixteenth-century Italy. Even if it were not for the sheer bulk of Caro's correspondence, and its even distribution throughout the years of his maturity, it would constitute an important historical source simply because he had such a broad range of interests and such a wide circle of friends. As a personal secretary, first to Monsignor Giovanni Gaddi, then to Alessandro and Pier Luigi Farnese, and as a friend of both Marcello Cervini (Marcellus II) and Giovanni Antonio Fac