# Is "Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo" by Galileo Galilei a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo by Galileo Galilei (Giovanni Battista Landini, Florence, 1632) is identified by: Quarto (about 216 x 157 mm), imprint 'In Fiorenza, per Gio. Florence: Giovanni Battista Landini, 1632 is the true first — the Italian original, printed under a formal licence from the Inquisition, presented to Ferdinando II de' Medici on 22 February 1632, and suppressed within months, with the work placed on the Index in 1633.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Quarto (about 216 x 157 mm), imprint 'In Fiorenza, per Gio
- Batista Landini, 1632', with Landini's woodcut printer's device on the title, 31 woodcut diagrams and illustrations in the text, italic type with shoulder notes in roman, woodcut and factotum initials, and the errata leaf Ff6
- Two points recur in every careful description and are the practical tests
- First, a small printed cancel slip pasted into the margin of F6v (page 92), supplying a question of Simplicio dropped through a compositor's error; it is frequently missing, with only paste residue surviving, and its absence is common rather than disqualifying
- Second, the letter H added in manuscript ink to the diagram on M8v (page 192), which independent dealers and auction houses alike record 'as usual'
- The etched frontispiece by Stefano della Bella, showing Aristotle, Ptolemy and Copernicus in conversation, was added only after distribution had begun and several copies had already been sold, so it is often absent — its presence is not a first-edition test
- Publisher imprint reads Giovanni Battista Landini, Florence

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Galileo Galilei |
| Publisher | Giovanni Battista Landini, Florence |
| Year | 1632 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Quarto (about 216 x 157 mm), imprint 'In Fiorenza, per Gio |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Quarto (about 216 x 157 mm), imprint 'In Fiorenza, per Gio. Batista Landini, 1632', with Landini's woodcut printer's device on the title, 31 woodcut diagrams and illustrations in the text, italic type with shoulder notes in roman, woodcut and factotum initials, and the errata leaf Ff6. Two points recur in every careful description and are the practical tests. First, a small printed cancel slip pasted into the margin of F6v (page 92), supplying a question of Simplicio dropped through a compositor's error; it is frequently missing, with only paste residue surviving, and its absence is common rather than disqualifying. Second, the letter H added in manuscript ink to the diagram on M8v (page 192), which independent dealers and auction houses alike record 'as usual'. The etched frontispiece by Stefano della Bella, showing Aristotle, Ptolemy and Copernicus in conversation, was added only after distribution had begun and several copies had already been sold, so it is often absent — its presence is not a first-edition test. Bauman records the frontispiece in the fourth state of four, with the artist's signature present, as usual. The final blank leaf (Kk4) is often absent, and leaves in signature Bb are frequently bound out of sequence. References: Cinti 89; Norman 858; PMM 128; Dibner, Heralds of Science 8; Grolier/Horblit 18c; Riccardi I:511; Carli and Favaro 128.

## Is this the true first?
Florence: Giovanni Battista Landini, 1632 is the true first — the Italian original, printed under a formal licence from the Inquisition, presented to Ferdinando II de' Medici on 22 February 1632, and suppressed within months, with the work placed on the Index in 1633. Two later editions must be named because both are collected in their own right. The first Latin is Systema cosmicum, translated by Matthias Bernegger at Galileo's wish and printed at Strasbourg by David Hautt in 1635 in an edition of about 600 copies, on sale by March of that year. The first English is in the first tome of Thomas Salusbury's Mathematical Collections and Translations (London, 1661) — the first rendering of the Dialogo into any vernacular and the only one for more than two centuries; Salusbury's second tome of 1665 was almost wholly destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666, with only about seven copies of its first part recorded. Stillman Drake's 1953 translation is a modern 'first thus', not a first edition of anything.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition exists for a 1632 quarto. The reprint traps are the 1635 Strasbourg Latin Systema cosmicum, the later collected editions of Galileo's Opere, and modern facsimiles. Within the 1632 edition itself, the frequent absence of the della Bella frontispiece and of the page 92 cancel slip reflects how the book was distributed rather than a later printing — but for that same reason a frontispiece supplied from elsewhere is a known concern, and Whitmore's description of a copy records checking the frontispiece for the correct, thicker paper stock and dark-ink impression consistent with the initial run.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo* by Galileo Galilei a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/dialogo-sopra-i-due-massimi-sistemi-del-mondo
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.