The First Ten Cantos of the Inferno of Dante Alighieri. Newly Translated into English Verse. (John Neal association copy)

JOHN NEAL'S COPY, with his lightly-penciled annotations, OF THE FIRST AMERICAN EDITION OF ANY PART OF DANTE'S DIVINE COMEDY. 83 pp. + an engraved portrait frontispiece of Dante by David Claypool Johnston. The translator, Thomas William Parsons (1819-1892), was a leading Boston dentist (!), poet, and intellectual. A contemporary (and acquaintance) of Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Emerson, Thoreau, and James Russell Lowell, this is his first published work. Although he was only in his early 20s when he composed this translation, he demonstrates a highly-developed poetic sensibility and the work has considerable literary merit (and doubtless played a role in encouraging Parsons' friend Longfellow to translate the entire Comedy a few decades later). Still, Dante was relatively unknown in America during the early 19th century, and so very few copies of this privately-printed edition were issued. This is AN OUTSTANDING ASSOCIATION COPY, with a presentation inscription from Parsons to JOHN NEAL, ESQ. Neal (1793-1876) was an intellectual who traveled in the same literary circles as Parsons. He is considered the first American author to use slang in his writing, and was an early proponent of women's rights (and a lawyer, boxer, and architect as well). Neal read this book carefully, as attested by several brief, lightly-penciled marginal annotations. Published by William Davis Ticknor (1810-1864), who went on to found Ticknor and Fields. Printed on fine wove paper. Large 8vo. BOUND IN THE ORIGINAL CLOTH-BACKED BOARDS, WITH THE ORIGINAL PAPER SPINE LABEL INTACT. Some wear to extremities of binding, but structurally solid. INTERNALLY FINE AND BRIGHT. Housed in a custom-made cloth folding case. Colomb de Batines I, 269 (not mentioning the frontispiece portrait present here); BAL 15518 (with note that this work is cited without being seen). A truly exceptional copy of an important and extremely rare book.