La divina commedia.: Con postille e cenni introduttivi del prof. Raffaello Fornaciari. Edizione minuscola ad uso delle letture pubbliche e delle scuole.

Milano: Enrico Hoepli,, 1911. Second Fornaciari edition, first printing, inscribed on the front pastedown to George Bataille, philosopher and critic of Surrealism, by his college friend Georges Recoura: "A Georges Bataille, l'ami affectueux des heures lourdes de Londres, Georges Recoura, 8 Novembre 1920". Both Bataille and Recoura had recently graduated from the École des Chartes in Paris. In the year of the inscription, Bataille (1897-1962) moved to London for a study stay at the British Museum. Recoura (1897-1925) appears to have been in the city around the same time (see Porcher, p. 237), before 1922. The two eventually were hired by the Bibliothèque nationale de France as librarians - Recoura in 1922 and Bataille in 1924. Dante famously appears in the first Surrealist manifesto as a literary precursor of the movement; Bataille had a complex relationship with both. Initially attracted by Surrealism, the philosopher later distanced himself from it, writing works on its contradictions. In a heated discussion following the reading of Bataille's paper "The Surrealist Religion" in Paris in 1948, the philosopher admitted: "I don't know Dante's Inferno particularly well". Bataille (and the Surrealists) dismissed religion and Christian morality in particular. This charming pocket-size Dante was first published in 1904; the second edition was entirely revised and corrected. Sextodecimo. Original japon by Legatoria Sociale, Milan, spine and front cover lettered and decorated in black and red, orange pictorial endpapers designed by Ezio Anichini, top edge gilt. Slight soiling to rear cover, lettering on spine a little rubbed, faint foxing on endpapers, contents clean. A very good copy. Jean Porcher, "Georges Recoura", in Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes, vol. 86, 1925.