Botteghe Oscure. A complete run of this multi-lingual literary journal, founded by Marguerite Caetani, Princess of Bassiano, and edited by Giorgio Bassani and later Eugene Walter from their Rome offices on via delle Botteghe Oscure. GIORGIO BASSANI AND EUGENE WALTER (edit).

First editions, complete in 25 volumes. 8vo. Lettered card wrappers. Eight of the final nine volumes housed in the original dust wrappers (the first fifteen volumes were not issued with dust wrappers, although some appeared with wraparound bands, one of which remains in situ here). A few of the card wrappers are a little toned, and dust soiled with an occasional scattering of light spotting. The wrappers of one volume (XI) exhibit some creasing and splashes of indeterminate staining. Contemporary inked inscription to the first leaf of another volume (XXI). In all a very good set of this important biannual literary journal of poetry and prose in Italian, French and English, also with some German-language and Spanish-language contributions. Lacking the 1948-52 index volume (1953). Across its twelve-year run the journal attracted a vast number of internationally renowned contributors including Conrad Aiken, W. H. Auden, James Agee, George Barker, Saul Bellow, Elizabeth Bowen, Jocelyn Brooke, Truman Capote, e. e. cummings Laurie Lee, Robert Lowell, Carson McCullers, George Santayana, Edith Sitwell, Elizabeth Taylor, Dylan Thomas (the first printing of both his poem 'Do not go gentle into that good night', and also 'Llareggub' which was the genesis of 'Under Milk Wood'), Alexander Trocchi, William Carlos Williams, Georges Bataille, Albert Camus, René Char, André Frénaud, Paul Valéry, Giorgio Bassani, Italo Calvino, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Carlo Levi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ignazio Silone, Umberto Saba, Ingeborg Bachmann, Paul Celan, Nelly Sachs, Heinrich Boll, Isak Dinesen, Carlos Fuentes, and Octavio Paz.