SHELLEY (MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT) Autograph letter signed ('Mary Shelley') to an unknown recipient ('Honoured Sir'), in Italian, asking for information on certain Italian books and asking if he could pay her a visit, asking if a life of Manzoni, '...autore dei Promessi Sposi...', has been published, and wondering who wrote L'Assedio di Firenze, going on to ask what he thinks of it ('...è pieno di talento, non è vero? - e poi di fervore Italiano...'), ending by commenting that it has been a long time since they last met and wishing him good health, some corrections and deletions, 2 pages, dust-staining, ink blots and mathematical calculations in another hand affecting a few words of text, one blot resulting in a small hole, creased and much folded, some discolouration and smudging, 8vo (181 x 115mm.), 41D Park Street, 6 August 1838 Footnotes: 'È PIENO DI TALENTO, NON È VERO? - E POI DI FERVORE ITALIANO': MARY SHELLEY WRITES IN ITALIAN ON ITALIAN LITERATURE. Our unpublished letter dates from a period of great productivity in the late 1830's when Mary Shelley was working on essays for Lardner's Biography and Lives, and her carefully edited collections of Percy Bysshe Shelley's works and essays of 1839. Here she writes to another Italian speaker asking after a biography of Alessandro Manzoni, the author of I promessi sposi ('The Betrothed') of 1827, his greatest work which had a significant influence on subsequent Italian literary fiction. She also enquires as to the identity of the author of L'Assedio di Firenze, a novel written in the Byronic manner glorifying the life of the sixteenth-century soldier Francesco Ferrucio, which was written by Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi. It is likely she is researching her articles Modern Italian Romances, which came out in two parts in the Monthly Chronicle, November and December 1838. Within a discussion of Italian culture and her support for the Italian revolutions of the 1820's and 1830's, she describes Manzoni as 'a man of first-rate genius' and praised his 'admirable discrimination and representation of character' (MIR, p.417). Whilst the years in Italy were tinged with personal sadness, the Shelley's Italian years were a time of intense intellectual and creative activity and, although she had been back in England since 1823, she maintained a deep nostalgia for the Italian language, literature and culture which she associated with those '...days of bliss...' (see lot 62). This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: * * VAT on imported items at a preferential rate of 5% on Hammer Price and the prevailing rate on Buyer's Premium. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing