Sold for $8,125

8vo (160 x 103 mm). Woodcut device on title-page. (Some minor staining.) Later half vellum, upper cover with the gilt arms of the Bridgewater family. Provenance: a few early manuscript annotations verso of last blank leaf; the Bridgewater family library (binding, bookplate and shelfmark, see below).

Early edition of Machiavelli's Discourses, preceded by Antonio Blado's 1531 edition published in Rome, and a 1534 edition published by Sessa. In 1540, the first Aldine edition was published. The Bridgewater family library was acquired by Henry Huntington en bloc in 1917 from the fourth Earl of Ellsemere; at the time, it was the oldest family library still in private hands. Small portions of the library were sold in the 19th century; Henry Huntington sold some books from the collection at auction between 1918 and 1924. The rest of the collection comprises the core of the Huntington Library's early English collections.  

VERY RARE: according to American Book Prices Current, no copy this edition has sold at auction in the last 40 years; OCLC traces only two copies (held by the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève and the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin). Not in Adams; Grasse IV 323; STC (Italy) II 293.