Lettere della Signora Isabella Andreini Padovana,: comica gelosa, et academica intenta, nominata l'accesa. Aggiuntovi di nuovo li Ragionamenti piacevoli del'istessa....

Venice: Giovanni Battista Combi, 1620. Very Good. Octavo (163 x 105 mm). Two parts in one volume, each with separate title page (second title reads: "Fragmenti di alcune scritture..." ). [24], 268, [4 blank]; 180, [4 blank] pages. Printer's device on title pages. Large woodcut initials. Bound in 18th century in plain leather over pasteboard, spine in six compartments decorated with gilt tools and stamps, raised bands, red leather title label. Edges stained red. Marbled endleaves. Upper joint cracked but holding, with small chip lacking at base of spine and old repair at headcap. Occasional light foxing, with small ink drops (pages 19 and 164-5 of the first part, p.89 of the second). Old ownership inscription in upper margin of title page; modern ex-libris of Mario Bagliani (1926-1990), noted collector of books related to theater arts.

References: Ferri, p. 14 (not this edition); Vinciana 3319; Michel I, 142, #7; Graesse I, 121 (noting this as the sixth edition of the epistolary).

The star female player of the well-known Gelosi troupe, Isabella Andreini enjoyed fame as "the most celebrated commedia dell'arte actress of her century," says Prof. Meredith K. Ray. She wrote prolifically for the stage, including a series of plays in which she acted the title role under her own name (Lucky Isabella, Jealous Isabella, Isabella's Madness). She also produced several volumes of poetry. The volume of "Lettere" offered here was first printed in 1607, three years after the author's death (in childbirth), and saw many subsequent editions. It is joined, with a separate title page and pagination, by a series of serio-comic dialogues, the "Ragionamenti piacevoli," or "Fragmenti," as they are called on the dedicated title page.

Prof. Diana Robin points out, perceptively, that epistolary collections had been an accepted genre for women writers in the Renaissance (with a hiatus in the mid-16th-century). The genre, she says, "cast itself as a major mode for women's publications from the opening of the seventeenth century until the modern era" (Publishing Women, p. 203).
I think it is a mistake to call "Lettere" an epistolary. There are no salutations or addressees, rarely dialogue with an imagined recipient. In fact, it is a series of short essays, very like Montaigne's, on a broad variety of subjects, most of them "approved' for women (love, marriage, desire, jealousy, etc) and others profoundly outside conventional women's roles.

Her fame can be judged by the gratulatory verses in the front matter of the epistolary by Tasso and Marino among others. Andreini and Tasso admired each other. She frequently played the (male) role of Aminta in Tasso's pastoral drama of the same name, and her acknowledged masterpiece, the pastoral play "Mirtilla," is loosely based on Tasso's model. Her letter on the death of Tasso (p. 184 in this volume) is a particularly moving meditation on the unfairness of mortality. "Even the world, which seems immune, will someday die."

The "Ragionamenti piacevoli" consist of 31 sketches, whether meant for stage or merely for thought, posed as dialogues or arguments on contrasting themes, such as epic versus tragedy, lawyers versus medical doctors, hate v love, and even a free-for-all pitting falling in love, falling out of love, marriage, vows of fidelity, and honesty all against each other.