WIDENER HAS ITALIAN MANUSCRIPT EXHIBIT

In connection with the visit of more than three hundred Italian students to Harvard tomorrow, the Treasure Room of Widener Library is holding an exhibition this week of the highlights of the University's collection of volumes relating to Italian literature and history.

Most valuable of the books on display is a Petrarch "incunabulum Trionfl", printed in Venice in 1497. Also included are an early edition of Boccaccio's "Decameron", printed at Brescia in 1536, and a very rare edition of Boccaccio's "Thirteen Delectable Questions", one of the earliest translations of Boccaccio to be printed in England, published in London in 1587.

In the field of modern Italian literature the exhibit contains some of the poems of Adolfo Bosis, the young Italian flier who lost his life when flying over Rome in order to drop anti-Fascisti pamphlets on the city. There is also a collection of the poems of Ada Negri, Nobel Prize winner, one of the poets to gain praise from Mussolini.

Widener Library's assortment of pamphlets of the Risorgiomento period of the 19th century, from the collection of Mr. H. Nelson Gay, A.M. 1896, figure in the exhibit. Also shown are examples of the early briefs of Crispi, famous Italian lawyer; fine editions of Dante, both old and modern, including some plates done for the Inferno by William Blake.