Nunes de Leão, Duarte | The first comprehensive treatise on Portuguese orthography

Nunes de Leão, Duarte

Orthographia da lingua portuguesa. Lisbon: Per João de Barreira, 1576

4to (185 x 130 mm). Title with printer's device, woodcut initials; minor foxing and some stains, dampstain to upper corner of C5, otherwise a clean copy. Full eighteenth-century mottled sheep boards, edges speckled red, marbled endpapers; slightly worn at extremities, a few glue stains from inventory sticker on front pastedown, boards slightly rubbed. 

First edition of the first comprehensive treatise on standardized Portuguese spelling and language.

Leão's Orthographia was only one of the author's many works focused on homogenizing the language, law, and monarchical history of Portuguese culture. A historian, grammarian, and eventual judge, his other works include Repertorio dos cinquo livros das ordenacões, Chronicas dos Reis de Portugal, and Origem da lingoa portuguesa.

REFERENCES

Innocêncio II, 210; Barbosa Machado I, 736-7; Palau 196757

PROVENANCE

Annibal Fernandez Thomáz (bookplate to front pastedown)