Giacomo Leopardi

Operette morali

Milano, [Milan], Ant. Fort. Stella, 1827, original azure wrappers, in 8º.
First edition.

«I read Count Leopardi’s book, and I found the most well-written in this century» (Niccolò Tommaseo)

The first edition of The moral essays was published in 1827: three of the 21 essays in the book (Tasso, Colombo and Timandro) had been printed in the periodical «Antologia» in January 1826, but Leopardi was not at all satisfied with this publication and confided to his friends that he was disappointed with the great number of misprints. He started looking for a publisher to issue the whole set; Stella, who was already working with Leopardi on the annotations for Petrarch’s Canzoniere and on the Crestomazia italiana, accepted. After discussing how to proceed (Stella thought the essays could be printed in another paper, but Leopardi never consented to it), they eventually reached an agreement in early 1827 and the book was printed in June that same year.

«Everything I have written descends from the Moral essays» Italo Calvino

For his contemporaries, The moral essays was pivotal in understanding Leopardi’s poetry and its philosophical grounding and meaning: both his Pensieri and Zibaldone were published posthumously, and this was the only complete prose work Leopardi ever saw in print: the nucleus of his thought system is well rooted within it.

Bibliography
—Mazzatinti e Menghini, Bibliografia leopardiana, n. 667
— Catalogo del fondo leopardiano, n. 92
— Besomi, Operette ed. critica, passim