(NOTE: If you are looking for the Thomas Nuckols Family Bible, which was sold on this site January 2008, you can still view the description and photos at this location.)
Edited by Luigi Foscolo Benedetto
Published in Firenze, 1928, by Leo S. Olschki
Also known as Il Milione di Marco Polo
Because there is virtually no information about this book on the Internet, and photos of the contents are absent altogether, I will leave the contents of this web page up even though the book has been sold.
PROVENANCE:This is a large, impressive and important work. I have never seen a copy for sale on the Internet. It is my belief that virtually all 600 copies are in the libraries of institutions and thus will never be available on the market. For example, the Library of Congress and the University of Michigan Library each have one copy.
I inherited this book from my father, who was an historian and medieval scholar. He owned the book from at least 1950 onwards. I remember seeing it as early as 1950, when I was 6, and that my father took great care with his book collection.
CONDITION: The leather-and-cloth cover is a bit worn but the pages are all in fine condition, with no dog-ears, musty smell or splotchiness. The back cover has begun to split from the binding for the top 2 inches. Otherwise the book is very sound. All pages and plates are present. The only marks in the book are evidence of a an earlier seller's or owner's pencilled marks on the blank last page (now illegible).
PHOTOGRAPHS: I have photographed the binding from all 6 sides. In addition I have photographed representative pages, including ALL plates, both color and monochrome. You will find these 32 photos, IN ORDER, at the bottom of this description. In addition, I have created an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) file of 8mb containing these 32 photos at twice the resolution of those on the web page. If you wish to examine the photos carefully (or keep a copy in a handy format on your computer) I recommend that you download this document and then view it at up to 300%. The photos have a resolution of 300dpi with medium compression. Click here to download the file.
Copyright Notice: You may use the photos on this web page for any purpose provided you credit Weblackey.com.
BACKGROUND: I am not a Marco Polo scholar. If this is your field then you already know more than I do about the significance of this book. But for the record, here is what I know. . . .
There have been many manuscripts of Il Milione over the centuries, but the original manuscript is lost. Various scholars have sought to reconcile differences in the manuscripts to arrive at the most likely text for the original. This particular volume seems to be the Holy Grail for Polo students. Here is what the Encyclopedia Britannica says,
Here is part of the Wikipedia article:
The oldest surviving Polo manuscript is in Old French[7] heavily flavoured with Italian; for Benedetto, this "F" text is the basic original text, which he corrected by comparing it with the somewhat more detailed Latin of Ramusio, together with a Latin manuscript in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana." It is my understanding that the book is significant also for being written in Italian, Marco Polo's own tongue, as hitherto studies seem to have been done in French, English, etc.
THE PUBLISHER: The venerable publishing house of Olschki is still in business after all these years, and this edition is still in their catalog at www.Olschki.it. Here it is:
DESCRIPTION: The size in inches is 10 x 14 x 1.8. Weight is 7.5 lbs (3.4 kg). The first section of the book, 221 pages, is the scholarly treatment, in Italian. The second section, 285 pages, contains the manuscript, in French, followed by indexes. I know some French and can follow the manuscript, but modern French it is not. See the sample pages.
PLATES: As stated above, there are some color and monochrome plates and all have been photographed. An examination of the PDF document should give you an idea of the quality of these plates.
PAYMENT, SHIPPING, ETC.: (In the original listing I list the terms, and my credentials, but I have removed these now that the volume is gone).
Contact Information:
I am Ralph Walker
Thank you for your interest in Il Milione.
Click here to contact me by e-mail.
This website was launched 12/16/2003 and last updated 5/31/2013. The copy of IL MILIONE was described here on April 26, 2008.
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"A Franco-Italian text of Marco Polo's book, generally considered very near to the lost original, has been edited, collated with many other early manuscripts, and published by L.F. Benedetto, Il Milione, prima edizione integrale (1928). This work is fundamental; a long and detailed introduction (in Italian) deals with the complex problems related to the text and its tradition."
"The edition of Luigi Foscolo Benedetto, Marco Polo, Il Milione, under the patronage of the Comitato Geografico Nazionale Italiano (Florence: Olschki, 1928) collated sixty additional manuscript sources, in addition to some eighty that had been collected by Sir Henry Yule, for his 1871 edition. It was Benedetto who identified Rustichello da Pisa,[6] as the original compiler or amanuensis, and his established text has provided the basis for many modern translations: his own in Italian (1932,) and Aldo Ricci's The Travels of Marco Polo (London, 1931).
Author: Polo, Marco
Title: Il Milione.
Prima edizione integrale a cura di L. F. Benedetto.
Characteristics: cm. 25,5 x 35,5, ccxxi-281 pp. con 2 cc. e 11 tavv. di cui 3 a col. e oro. Edizione su carta a mano, tirata in 600 esemplari numerati.
Year: 1928 Price (Euro): ISBN:
Series: Subseries: Out of print
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At the moment this site is being used to describe a rare book which was sold May 31, 2013 for $2000, namely, the Numbered (154 of 600) 1928 first edition of Marco Polo's Il Milione, edited by Olschki in Italy.
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