The same setting of type was also imposed in quarto format. See Gaskell.

Octavo issue normally has 2 cancelled leaves, though some have an additional 53. See Gaskell.

Variants are known with t.p. date 1771. According to Gaskell, the letterpress was probably printed in 1770, and the plates completed late in 1773 (though some plates in v. 3 & 4 bear the date 1774).

Frontispiece port. of Ariosto (v. 1) by Charles Eisen after Titian, engraved by Etienne Ficquet. XLVI additional plates, one before each canto, by Francesco Bartolozzi, Pierre-Philippe Choffard, Nicolas Delaunay, Antoine Jean Duclos, Emmanuel de Ghendt, Isidore-Stanislas Helman, Benoit Louis Henriquez, Joseph de Longueil, Pietro Antonio Martini, Jean Massard, Jean Michel Moreau le jeune, Nicolas Ponce, Benoît Louis Prévost, and Jean Baptiste Blaise Simonet; they are after drawings by Giovanni Battista Cipriani, Charles Nicolas Cochin, Eisen, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Charles Monnet and Moreau.

"Vita di Lodovico Ariosto, scritta dal dottore Giovanni Andrea Barotti Ferrarese"--Vol. 1, p. [i]-lii.

List of subscribers, v. 1.

Errata, v. 1, [*3]2.

Index at end of v. 4.

Gaskell, P. Baskerville, 48

ESTC T133621

Getty copy has the normal 2 cancelled leaves in v. 4 ([A8], D2).

Bound in 4 vols. in citron full-grain goatskin. Gilt-tooled on boards, edges of boards, spines and turn-ins. Page edges gilt. Tooling on spine include title ARIOSTO, vol. no., and imprint at foot BIRMINGHAM 1773. Now in two slipcases (vols. 1-2 & 3-4).

Bookplates of Harleston Deacon and Oscar Ladner, the latter dated 1916 at Vienna.