16mo. [6], lxxix, [1], 389pp, [1]. With an engraved portrait frontispiece. Handsomely bound in contemporary dark green calf, tooled in gilt and blind supralibros of George Granville Leveson-Gower, first Duke of Sutherland (1758-1833) to upper board. A trifle rubbed and marked. Marbled endpapers, recent bookplate of Robert J. Hayhurst to FEP, scattered spotting.

A compact edition of Italian poet and writer Alessandro Tassoni's (1565-1635) best-known work, the mock-heroic poem La Secchia. Often considered the origin of the Baroque mock-epic, the work is considered to have heavily influenced Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock (1712). To avoid controversy in a divided Italy, the volume was first published in France under the pseudonym Androvinci Melisone, before being released in Venice with the author's name corrected.