A finely bound copy of Rigg's edition, the "most long lived of the early 20th-century versions" (Armstrong, p. 270). First published in 1903, in 1930 the translation was used for the Everyman's Library series, and it remained the canonical British Decameron for the next half century. Rigg's translation leaves the most explicit part of the erotic story cycle in Italian, the effects of which Armstrong argues "have been far-reaching for the reputation of Boccaccio in the British Isles at least. the editorial decision to demarcate the censorship in this way has no doubt contributed to the notorious reputation of this book as a repository of obscenity" (ibid., p. 272). The Chalon plates originally appeared as a set of 20 alongside John Payne's translation of 1893; for Rigg's edition the publishers cut the number to the 12 least explicit plates. It also features woodcut reproductions in the introduction after the first illustrated Decameron, published in Venice in 1492. Guyda Armstrong, The English Boccaccio: A History in Books, 2013. Two volumes, octavo (256 x 181 mm). Contemporary red straight grained morocco, spine lettered and decorated in gilt, covers bordered in gilt with green onlay to corners, gilt inner dentelles, red silk endpapers, top edges gilt, fore and bottom edges uncut. Photogravure frontispiece to vol. I, 11 similar plates, all after oil paintings by Louis Chalon, woodcut reproductions to text, title page printed in red and black. Minor skinning to edges of endpapers, scattered foxing to contents. A near-fine copy.
