GRAMMATICS - 16th Elia Levita, Sefer Tishbi [in Hebrew] - ספר התשבי לאליהו התשבי. Isny, for the author by Paul Fagius, 1541. In-4, 1-244 (signatures in Hebrew). Printer's mark xylographed on colophon. Bound with: Sefer Shut HaRan, by Rabbi Nissim Girondi, Metz, chez Gottschalk Speyer, [1776]. With royal privilege of Louis XVI. Printed after the Rome edition of 1545. Bound in full shagreened calf, stamped fillets on boards, five-ribbed spine with gilt fillets, beige morocco title-piece. Red edges, some spotting. Various handwritten bookplates in Hebrew cursive and German. First edition, in Hebrew, of this etymological treatise on 712 words from the Talmud and Midrash, providing their interpretation in Old Yiddish. The first or second Hebrew book printed in Isny, the fruit of the collaboration of two outstanding humanists, Paul Fagius and Elie Levita, then aged over seventy. Elie (Elijah ben Asher) Levita (1469-1549) was not only a great Hebraist, but also one of the first great writers in the Yiddish language, in which he published a famous dictionary and novel. He was a proofreader for Daniel Bomberg in Venice. At the age of 70, he left his wife and children to settle in the Bavarian town of Isny and oversee the Hebrew printing works of Paul Fagius, the town's only printer. Levita is also known for his translation of the Bovo-Buch, the first secular book to be printed in Yiddish (Adams E125; Zedner 228).