Selva di bellissimi dubbi con dotte solutioni a ciascun dubbio accommodate, divisa in due parti. Delle quali nella prima i naturali, nell'altra i morali si contengono: di nuovo rivista et d'utili annotationi arricchita da Annibale Novelli piacentino, come à questo segno * vedere si potrà

8vo (146x98 mm). [16], 280 pp. Collation: †8 A-R8 S4. Printer's device on the title page. Roman and italic type. Woodcut historiated initials and headpiece. Late 19th-century half vellum, morocco lettering piece on spine, gilt edges (joints repaired, slightly worn). Ownership entry on title-page verso “Alberto Pavesi”. Some occasional foxing and browning, small repaired holes on the last leaf slightly affecting one letter of text.
First edition of this reprint of Ortensio Lando's Quattro libri de dubbi con le solutioni a ciascun dubbio accommodate, first published in Venice by Giolito de' Ferrari in 1552. As stated by the editor Annibale Novelli in his note to the readers, Lando's work was at the same time abridged (“In somma si siamo forzati di ridurre l'opra a quella mediocrità, che ne tedio apportasse, à chi di brevità ha bisogno”) and integrated with additions and remarks (“onde postomivi dietro, a pur'assai Dubbi, che mancavano di risposta, o solutione, ho cercato di accomodarcela”). Novelli's additions are marked in the text with an asterisk.
Lando's name is never mentioned in the edition, neither in the dedication to Girolamo Lupi Marquis of Soragna signed by the typographer Giovanni Bazachi (from Piacenza, 11 June 1597) nor in Novelli's address to the readers.
The work is in the form of short dialogues in which the author answers to ‘doubts' (puzzling questions) proposed by various ladies and gentlemen, his friends and acquaintances, all mentioned by name (e.g. Torquato Bembo, Fulvio e Ludovico Rangone, Pio degli Obizzi, Vincenzo Brusantini, Lucrezia and Isabella Gonzaga, Francesco Nogarola, Gabriele Giolito, Giovanni Maria Bonardo, etc.).
Little is known about the philosopher and philologist from Piacenza Annibale Novelli (L. Mensi, Dizionario biografico piacentino, Piacenza, 1899 (reprint Bologna, 1978), p. 304).
Edit 16, CNCE32056; S. Bongi, Annali di Gabriel Giolito de' Ferrari, Rome, 1890, I, p. 369; A. Corsaro, Bibliografia di Ortensio Lando, Bologna, 2010, p. 14.