INSTRUCTIONS FOR YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN IN WRITING TO EACH OTHER

Rost, Johannes Leonhart: Instruttione o Notitia de' Viglietti che in occasione di varii interessi sogliono spedirsi dagli huomini a persone dell' uno e dell' altro sesso, come anco da diverse donne alle loro confidenti e buone Amiche, concepita, e dichiarata con Regole ed essempi nella lingua Tedesca da Giovanni Leonardo Rost, e tradotta nell' Idioma Italiano da Francesco Ludovico Tonelli. Norimberga [Nuremberg], appresso Giovanni Giacomo Wolrab. 1745.

Italian version of a German guide to writing short letters or notes. The introduction states that it was not meant for the Italian market, but to teach German language students, and indeed, in the early 19th-cent., the copy went into an Austrian school library. The work is made up of formulas, with introduction and index. Much attention is given to love matters, and included are examples of how to invite a woman to a firework display, how she could write to accept, how she could reply to an invitation to the opera that she would be happy to go another time, and how she could write absolving her lover of imputed infidelity.

Details

8vo., pp. [6] 448 [64] + engraved frontispiece. Light browning, the odd light spot, a split in the text-block after the first 3 leaves (all leaves still secure) and text block also splitting from binding at bottom hinge (binding still soundly attached), otherwise a good copy, bound in contemporary or early brown speckled paper boards, rubbed and slightly worn, edges mottled red. Neat inscription dated 1818 to title-page, and shelfmark bookplate, of library of school at Krems.

OCLC (2009) shows copies in Anna Amalia Library and Mainz. Not in ICCU.