Inscribed to the King of Italy w/House of Savoy Crest: Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome; Volume XI

Rome: The American Academy in Rome, 1933. First Edition. Leather bound. Very Good+. Tall 4to. Pp. 126 followed by 16 plates of black-and-white plans and photographs of ruins, and two pages of publisher's titles. Marbled endpapers. Bound in full blue pebble-grain morocco, gilt squares on covers, gilt rules on spine, with the gilt House of Savoy crest on the front cover. Binder's stamp C. Glingler Roma. Presentation inscription on the front free-endpaper to the King of Italy, His Majesty Vittorio Emanuele III. Three tiny wormholes on front cover, and slight rubbing to binding, with a bit of loss to lower frame of gilt squares on front and rear covers, and light scuff on spine (see photos). Manuscript inscription reads, A Sua Maesta Vittorio Emanuele III Re d'Italia in occasione della Sua visita alla American Academy in Rome/Roma, li 16 Maggio 1933. The collection includes American scholars' research on large baths at Hadrian's villa, antiquities of the Janiculum, terra sigillata in the Princeton collection, etc. Although in 1929 Mussolini officially removed House of Savoy lions from the Kingdom of Italy coat of arms, replacing them with fasces, here, in 1933 the lions remain fierce and indomitable on the front-cover's gilt-stamped crest. That subtlety may reflect a slight act of subterfuge on the part of the publisher or binder, or simply reliance on an existing binder's stamp..