The Old Yellow Book: source of Browning's The Ring and the Book

Washington, D.C: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1916. Second Edition. Softcover. Good. 4to 11" - 13" tall. No copies available on-line currently of this stated Second Edition. Author published the long article in a March 1908 issue of The Atlantic (!) about this item and published the First Edition as a reworked Ph.D. dissertation done under the tutelage of Dr. Hiram Corson. Author's General Preface lays out five things this study is not (not a poetry critical study, not a social history of Renaissance Italy, not a treatise in Roman law interpretation, etc.), but is rather alleged to be a side-by-side comparison of The Old Yellow Book (the Roman law murder-case onto which he stumbled) and The Ring and the Book (Robert Browning's masterpiece, a long dramatic narrative poem, practically a novel, one of 21,000 lines, published in four volumes from 1868 to 1869). This item tells the story of a murder trial in Rome, Italy, in 1698; an impoverished nobleman, Count Guido Franceschini, is found guilty of the murders of his young wife Pompilia (nee Comparini) and her parents, having suspected his wife was having an affair with a young cleric, Giuseppe Caponsacchi. Count Franceschini is found guilty despite his protestations and is sentenced to death. Being Catholic, he appeals to Pope Innocent XII to overturn the conviction but is unsuccessful. Browning's "poem" is 12 books long; ten are spoken, dramatic monologues by characters involved in the case (Count Guido, twice) who, in Rashamon-like effect, give different accounts of the "same" events. From the colophon here, "The unique collection of pamphlets, which the poet Robert Browning called 'The Old Yellow Book,' now rests in Balliol College, Oxford. This first reproduction of it has been made by the Columbia Planograph Company of Washington from photographic plates taken by the Clarendon Press, Oxford." The present item is a big, fat, heavy, oversized copy of the stated Second Edition of a complete photo-reproduction with translation, essay, and notes of The Old Yellow Book, Browning's commentary on a treatise of Roman law involving a nobleman and his 13-year-old child-wife. Bound in simple card stock wrappers, printed in black, text-block being split roughly in the middle, with a fine black-and-white painted portrait of the poet Robert Browning at frontis, tissue-guarded, the whole being seemingly unread, as most top edges and some fore-edges remain unopened still. Published by the Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C., first in 1908, here in Second Edition eight years later. Big, tall quarto format, measuring 10 3/8" x 8" tall and wide. Comprises the full text of the langue of Roman homicide law in Latin followed by English translations. The title, translated, is "A Setting Forth of the entire Criminal Case against Guido Franceschini, Nobleman of Arezzo, and his Bravoes, who were put to death in Rome, February, 22, 1698, the first by beheading, the other four by the gallows." It recounts a true case in Roman murder-case law "in which it is disputed whether and when a husband may kill his Adulterous Wife without incurring the ordinary penalty." Portions of the case were used by Robert Browning. From the Atlantic article, "This waif of a forgotten crime was not a published volume, but a collection of the testimony and arguments in the Franceschini murder case, tried in the criminal courts of Rome during January and February of 1698. The papal press had printed these matters in a series of pamphlets for use in the court. The pamphlets were then gathered along with certain other kindred material into a vellum cover, their collector probably being a Florentine lawyer of the day who had a technical interest in the case. This record is full of sophistries, of the shrewd thrust and parry of a great legal battle, of the torturing of fact and motive, of charge and countercharge, all weighed down by masses of precedent which further perplex the lay reader. It is one of the least literary, one of the most chaotic and forbidding of source books at first sight." Frontis matter, General Preface followed by a tissue guard in front of a facsimile signature of Robert Browning, with a Greek language inscription, then a half-title, Table of Contents, cclxii [3] pp. in Italian in single column text with generous margins, translation into English of the entire case, 3-345 pp.Member, I.O.B.A., C.B.A., and adherent to the highest ethical standards. Additional postage may be required for oversize or especially heavy volumes, and for sets.