This ambitious project explores in detail the history and output of the Giunti Press in Florence, covering the firm from its beginnings in 1497 to its end in 1625, and providing descriptions of each Giunti book published with extensive indication of the libraries holding copies of each edition. In doing so, it addresses issues of censorship, the development of the Italian language from Florentine dialect, and the larger literature and history of Florence in the late Renaissance.

Printer and publisher Aldus Manutius, founder of Aldine Press, is well known among students of Renaissance Italian literature and history. Less has been published on the Guinti, however, a family whose members established operations over much larger territory than the Aldine press, collectively achieving much greater financial resources and surviving for a longer period of time. Their role in the history of Italian literature was significant and deserves an extensive review. The aim, then, of the present history is to tell the story of this late Renaissance Florentine printer-publisher.

Part I of the book covers all aspects of the Giunti family and the press, the nature of its output, its relationship to the governments of Florence and Tuscany, to social conditions, to the economy, to members of their own family, to their editors, and to the strictures of censorship. Names of Greek authors and editors in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries have been cited in a transliteration of the Greek rather than the usual Western form, and libraries holding Florentine Giunti editions have been listed by country. The catalogue in Part II provides a basic description of all known editions, as well as some unsigned editions that others have attributed to the Giunti, seeking to identify as many surviving exemplars as possible. In addition, the book provides Giunti images, genealogical tables, a chronological list of editions by language, and a list of works cited.

Dr. William Pettas is a native of Buffalo, NY, and has had a long career in public and academic library administration. His research has focused on the Giunti family of Florence, and he has published extensively on their firms in Florence, Rome, Venice, Lyon, Burgos, Salamanca, and Madrid. In researching this book, he has traveled extensively to libraries with rare book collections in the US, England, Ireland, Spain, France, Italy, and Greece.