{"product_id":"das-romische-carneval-the-famously-rare-first-edition-entirely-uncut-and-preserving-both-illustrated-wrappers","title":"Das Römische Carneval: the famously rare first edition, entirely uncut and preserving both illustrated wrappers","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDas Römische Carneval.\u003c\/strong\u003e Berlin, printed by Johann Friedrich Unger; Weimar and Gotha, in commission with Carl Wilhelm Ettinger, 1789.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst edition, one of only 318 copies. Title with large engraved vignette, 69 pp., [1] errata. Quarto (278 × 212 mm).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the celebrated title-vignette of a vase and three masks designed by Johann Heinrich Lips, and twenty original hand-coloured plates.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eContemporary interim boards, both illustrated wrappers preserved (exceptionally fine; in an edition of only 318 copies, an entirely uncut example preserving both illustrated wrappers is of the greatest rarity).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e❦\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe most lavishly illustrated book of Goethe's lifetime, so rare he could not reacquire his own.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGoethe arrived in Rome in 1786 already famous as the author of \u003cem\u003eGötz\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eWerther\u003c\/em\u003e. There he turned to close observation, studying the city's architecture, ritual and daily life with the attention he had given to nature.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eDas Römische Carneval\u003c\/em\u003e emerged from that period of looking. Published in 1789, a year after his return, it turns away from the antiquities that had drawn travellers south and fixes instead on one of Rome's most ephemeral events, the annual Carnival. The choice was not obvious. He first saw the Carnival in February 1787 and returned to it the following year, describing its processions, masks, games and crowds with the same close attention he gave to natural phenomena. The twenty plates follow that sequence: the carriages and maskers crowding the Corso; the stock figures of Pulcinella, the Quaccheri and the advocates; the skirmishes of confetti; the riderless \u003cem\u003eBarberi\u003c\/em\u003e horse-race down the Corso; and the closing night of the \u003cem\u003emoccoli\u003c\/em\u003e, when the crowd presses through the streets crying \u003cem\u003e\"Sia ammazzato chi non porta moccolo\"\u003c\/em\u003e [Goethe, \u003cem\u003eDas Römische Carneval\u003c\/em\u003e; Batley, \u003cem\u003eGoethe-Jahrbuch\u003c\/em\u003e 105 (1988)]. Goethe presents the Carnival not as a spectacle staged for the people but as a festival the people give themselves, a few days in which the distinction between high and low seems for a moment to cease and all Rome goes masked. Among the figures he describes, and Schütz drew, are the Pulcinella, whose horn slyly recalls the ancient garden-god; the mock Advocate who waylays strangers with a book of absurd charges and threats of a lawsuit; and the Quaccheri in their old-fashioned silks [Goethe, \u003cem\u003eDas Römische Carneval\u003c\/em\u003e].\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSiegfried Unseld called it \"the most luxurious edition of a single work produced during Goethe's lifetime\" [Unseld, \u003cem\u003eGoethe and His Publishers\u003c\/em\u003e, p. 80]. Printed in only 318 copies, it sold out at once; Goethe complained that too few had been made, and, having given his own copy to the library at Wilhelmshöhe, near Kassel, could not obtain another, even finding himself outbid for a copy at auction. The deluxe edition was issued with a \u003cem\u003eNachricht für den Buchbinder\u003c\/em\u003e, a printed binder's-instruction slip not recorded in the standard bibliographies. Its making gathered the Weimar circle: drawings by Johann Georg Schütz, of the German artists' circle in Rome; engraving by Georg Melchior Kraus, director of the Weimar Drawing Academy; hand-colouring by that academy's pupils; the title-vignette by Lips, the Zürich engraver who had earlier worked with Goethe on Lavater's \u003cem\u003ePhysiognomische Fragmente\u003c\/em\u003e; and printing by Unger in the Didot types for which he held the German monopoly—a typographic achievement admired throughout Germany. The present copy preserves all of this in its most desirable state: interim boards, both wrappers, full uncut margins, and the complete sequence of twenty hand-coloured plates, substantially as its first subscribers met it in 1789.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003ePROVENANCE\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Heribert Tenschert Collection.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eREFERENCES\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHagen 193; Goedeke IV\/3, 470 (III); Kippenberg I, 363; Hirzel A 156–157; Speck 2140; Brieger 711; Wilpert\/Gühring 41; Lipperheide Sn 15–16; Rümann 353; Schütterle, \u003cem\u003eUntadelige Schönheit\u003c\/em\u003e (1993), p. 44, no. 1; \u003cem\u003eWiederholte Spiegelungen. Weimarer Klassik\u003c\/em\u003e (1999), no. 17.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGoethe, \u003cem\u003eBriefe an Charlotte von Stein\u003c\/em\u003e (14 and 20 December 1786); E. T. A. Batley, \"Das Römische Karneval oder Gesellschaft und Geschichte,\" \u003cem\u003eGoethe-Jahrbuch\u003c\/em\u003e 105 (1988), pp. 128 ff.; Siegfried Unseld, \u003cem\u003eGoethe and His Publishers\u003c\/em\u003e(Chicago, 2019).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Atelier Zweig Rare Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47012291379388,"sku":null,"price":103000.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0736\/1285\/3436\/files\/Roem-Carneval_Orig-Umschlaege-4.jpg?v=1782773007","url":"https:\/\/atelierzweig.com\/products\/das-romische-carneval-the-famously-rare-first-edition-entirely-uncut-and-preserving-both-illustrated-wrappers","provider":"Atelier Zweig Rare Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}