LA COMMEDIANTE IN FORTUNA, by [CHIARI, Pietro] - 1755: o sia Memorie di Madama N.N. scritte da lei medesima. Tomo primo [-secondo].

Two volumes, 8vo, pp. xvi, 200; 188, [4] bookseller's catalogue; with engraved frontispiece to volume one, and vignette on title-page of both volumes; woodcut initials, head-, and tailpieces; some light foxing and browning throughout, and light dampstaining to head of the second half of volume two; in contemporary carta rustica with decorative paper spine; some marking and wear, and spine of volume 2 chipped at head, but still an attractive copy.

First edition, uncommon, of this semi-autobiographical novel by the Jesuit, playwright and author Pietro Chiari (1712-1785).

Chiari spent fifteen years as court poet to Francesco III d'Este, based in Venice, writing over fifty comedies and numerous novels, and becoming throroughly immersed in Venetian literary society. It is this that informs the present novel, his fourth, written after he had already been in Venice for over a decade. La commediante in fortuna is the third and final novel what can be seen as a trilogy of works set within the Venetian theatrical world, after La ballerina onorata and La cantratrice per disgrazia, and follows Rosaura, a comic actress as she progresses from a life of poverty to one of fortune, through marriage to a wealthy protector. The plot, though, is of secondary interest to the modern reader (and likely also to the contemporary reader), with Chiari including many of his contemporaries, very lightly disguised, among the characters: inter alia, Goldoni (with whom he had a running feud), the critic Stefano Sciugliaga, and Casanova, whose dislike of Chiari, elaborated in the Histoire de ma fuite des prisons de Venise, was clearly reciprocated.

The novel swiftly proved popular, with two printings appearing in Naples and one in Parma, both in the same year. An English translation, Rosara or the adventures of an actress, was published in London in 1771.

See Valeria Tavazzi, 'I percorsi del romanzo italiano del Settecento: il caso della Commediante in fortuna di Pietro Chiari', in Beniscelli et al (eds), La Letteratura degli Italiani rotte confini passaggi, Genova 2012; OCLC records four copies outside Continental Europe, at Toronto, the Getty Research Institute, Birmingham, and the British Library.