Il giorno.

Milano: co' tipi di Luigi Mussi, 1811. Limited ed. Folio (460 x 310 mm); LIII, [I], 157, [3] pages. Edition limited to 150 copies, each numbered in manuscript, with a description of the paper stock, and signed by the typographer Luigi Mussi. Green cloth backstrip over green-and-black marbled paper over pasteboard. Paper label on spine titled in manuscript in block letters. Corners bumped, slight wear to edges. Reference: Bustico 61 ("superba edizione").

Interesting. Mussi published the text of Parini's masterpiece twice before, in 1805 (in smaller folio) and in 1808 (in octavo), both during the period he spent on his own in Parma after leaving his apprenticeship in Bodoni's shop. By the time he set up his shop in Milan (in 1806, while his shop in Parma was still active) he seems to have arrived at the idea, apparently independently, of the modern "limited edition," of choosing special paper, an impressive format, and introducing a personalized statement of limitation numbered and signed in ink by himself, the typographer, designer, printer. That is the edition offered here, in very large folio, on "reale velina" paper, with a note on the type at the back, and a signed statement of limitation at the front. The typographer thus joins the poet in responsibility for the book, a sort of co-author, a sort of "executive producer." Mussi surely developed this idea from the work of Bodoni, who frequently printed small editions on special paper, indeed on vellum, but without the trappings of the limitation page and the autograph. A few prior examples of the signed limited edition pre-date Mussi, but not many, and widely scattered. We give the printer credit for advancing this style of marketing.
Called (by Prof. emeritus Franco Fido) "the greatest Italian poet of his day and the most complete representative of Enlightenment literature in the country," Giuseppe Parini (1722-1799) emerged from a humble background. The poem offered here was intended as a satirical narrative of a day in the life of a young Milanese nobleman. It became his life's work. The first two parts, Il mattino (morning) and Il mezzogiorno (noon) were published anonymously in Milan in the mid 1760s. A third part, La sera (evening), did not materialize as expected, because Parini kept working at it. Eventually, that third part grew unwieldy and split into two distinct sections, Il vespro (evening) and La notte (night), while Parini continued to correct and re-write the parts that were already published. None of this saw print before Parini died in 1799. The manuscript material was collected and edited by several different scholars, who, beginning in 1803, published conjectural versions of the final poem with texts that varied slightly from one to another.
It was Luigi Mussi who, in his edition of 1805, published all four parts of the poem under its proper title, Il Giorno. Mussi is also credited (by Carducci, no less!) with establishing the standard text, the exemplar for all later editions, through the services of his editor and collaborator, Luigi Bramieri. From a typographical standpoint, this 1811 edition is Mussi's definitive rendition of poem he printed three times, and which he calls "the most beautiful and original poem of our times", with a rather boastful note on the typography, which he feels he perfected for this volume.