Giovanni Boccaccio The Decameron First Modern Library Edition 1931 as Stated

.. The Decameron by Giovanni BoccaccioFirst Modern Library Edition 1931 as Stated . See Pictures .. .. Translated by John PayneDecameron . Catalog #: 71.3Toledano References for The Modern LibraryGreen Balloon Cloth BindingOn the Spine: Titles and Modern Library stamped in gold: Design #6 Front Cover Torch Bearer Stamped in Gold: Design #6-7Rockwell Kent Design of the Running Torch Bearer on End Papers: #5 - #12SEE PICTURES . . . Clean bright tight copy . Brown Balloon Cloth Binding . . Spine is lightly faded . Titles and colophon stamped in gold on front cover and spine . normal page edge toning . Vertical cracking along the title page edge . . SEE PICTURES . . . Publishers Boni and Liveright began The Modern Library book line in 1917.  The seed of the idea was the Everyman Library, published in England but also available in the USA, good books at a reasonable price in a consistent format.  B&L published their first titles in 1917, beginning with The Picture of Dorian Gary by Oscar Wilde.Their books were published using a flexible but substantial leathette binding, falsely called "craft leather" by B&L which has misled many book sellers to this day.  They did not identify their editions as "first editions" because "everyone" knew the books had been printed previously.  Later researchers learned to identify them by their first appearance in the catalog of titles included in their books.  All books were numbered in the catalogs or on the dustjackets, although B&L was chronologically inconsistent in the numbering.In 1925, they sold the Modern Library book line of 108 titles and all stock to Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer.  Beginning that year, a transition year, the titles were published simply as, The Modern Library.  Cerf and Klopfer, in contrast to B&L, as they introduced new titles, identified "First Modern Library Edition" specifically on the copyright page.  Therefore, the lack of subsequent printings CANNOT be used to identify first editions, as is the common practice with other printers and book lines.  C&K continued the practice of numbering each book, and reused numbers when one title was dropped and replaced with a new title.The combination of the binding formats, and the number and names of titles in the book catalogs when included in the book or on the dustjackets, are used by researchers to identify the year or years when each specific book was printed.All of these books were published with dustjackets, although few survive to this day.  The paper was thin, for one thing, and the jackets frequently included a list of all the titles available with a coupon to cut-out and mail-in with your book selections for purchase.  Good-bye, dustjacket. ..Please ask any and all questions prior to purchasing an item or making a bid.Save on shipping with multiple purchases at the same time.  Contact me with questions.