The Trees of the Genealogia Deorum of Boccaccio

Chicago: The Caxton Club, 1923. FIRST and LIMITED EDITION, one of only 160 copies printed on handmade Fabriano Paper. With 21 plates, three of which are in beautiful full colour, with printed tissue guards. Also with fine engraved ititials and tables throughtout. 4to, publisher’s original half vellum over buff boards with small vellum corner-pieces. 24pp + plates. A very fine copy, near as pristine. SCARCE, LIMITED TO ONLY 160 COPIES. A study of the genealogical tables used to decorate Boccaccio's great mythological work, from manuscripts and the early printed editions. Genealogia deorum gentilium, known in English as On the Genealogy of the Gods of the Gentiles, is a mythography or encyclopedic compilation of the tangled family relationships of the classical pantheons of Ancient Greece and Rome, written in Latin prose in circa 1360 by the Italian author and poet Giovanni Boccaccio. The first printed edition was in Venice at the early date of 1472. By 1499, no fewer then eight editions had published, attesting to the popularity of the work.
Ernest Hatch Wilkins was a respected authority on Italian literature. His teaching career began at Amherst as an instructor of Romance languages from 1900 to 1904, and continued at Harvard, where he taught from 1906 to 1912 and again from 1947 to 1950 as a visiting lecturer on Italian literature. In 1912 he went to the University of Chicago where he was successively Associate Professor and Professor of Romance languages until his move to Oberlin in 1927. From 1923 to 1926 he served the University as Dean of its College of Arts, Literature and Science Wilkins served as Oberlin College's seventh president from 1927 until his retirement in 1946. He authored several respected works on Dante, Petrarch and Papini. He was a corresponding member of the Accademia Della Crusca in Florence and was decorated with the Cavaliere della Corona d'Italia in 1920 for his international promotion of Petrarch and Dante.