Progetto Sonzogno: Cultural Mediation and Technological Innovation in Post-Unification Italy

1. Progetto Sonzogno: Cultural Mediation and Technological Innovation in Post-Unification Italy In the 1970s, during a business negotiation, literary agent Eric Linder –the first and most important literary agent of the time in Italy- was asked to evaluate the publishers’ catalogue, and to estimate the importance of the authors carried by the Sonzogno house. His final opinion, as seen above in an unpublished document I discovered at the Sonzogno Archives in Milan, was extremely positive. It established beyond any doubt the value and vitality of the Sonzogno catalogue for new generationsreaders: “the potential of the publishing house seems huge to me”. The cover of Bollettino Bibliografico dello Stabilimento Sonzogno, a fascinating publication that Sonzogno publishers devoted to the print world and to the history of publishing. My current project takes an unusual angle into the cultural history of modern Italy by restoring and analyzing the catalogue of one of the most prolific Italian publishing houses, Sonzogno, whose archives were destroyed by WWII bombings in 1943. The FYAP summer grant enabled me to conduct archival research in Italy to complete a first essay on Sonzogno publisher. During my research trip in Italy in the summer of 2009, I was able to visit several archives and libraries in Milan (Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense; Civico Archivio fotografico di Milano; Civiche raccolte storiche and the “Centro di studi per la storia dell’editoria e del giornalismo”) and to gather material about the publishing house. I was also able to consult the Biblioteca storica Sonzogno, held in the historical library of RCS (Rizzoli Corriere della sera Group) and to meet the then director of the house, dottoressa Luisa Colicchio. The wealth of material is impressive. I decided to focus on a specific time-frame, 1861-1900, and on a specific individual, Edoardo Sonzogno, the founder of the publishing house (he was active between 1861 and 1912). His work exemplifies the passage from family-run print businesses to industrial and capitalist entreprises. His expertise in the different fields of newspapers, books and music (opera in particular) helped him become one of the most famous mpresario in Europe, as well as the owner of the most successful daily newspaper in Italy, Il secolo. The data collected during this fist round of archival research has been organized in a solicited essay for a forthcoming volume onTHE PRINTED MEDIA IN FIN-DE-SIECLE ITALY: PUBLISHERS, WRITERS AND READERS, edited by Ann H. Caesar, Gabriella Romani, and Jennifer Burns. The volume will be in print by early 2011.   The analysis and interpretation of the production of this publisher will become a monographic study on Sonzogno as a fundamental cultural mediator in liberal and fascist Italy, from 1861 through 1943. My project aims to describe the extent to which the expansion of the readership and the democratic ideology that defined Sonzogno’s vision are representative of the major changes occurring in liberal Italy, as the newly formed nation was striving to overcome its elitist roots and foster a more “popular” ambition to knowledge. Silvia Valisa – Italian Studies – Modern languages and Linguistics Department, svalisa@fsu.edu.