Letters to the Editor: Alba de Céspedes and Gianna Manzini, Mondadori Authors
Milan, Fondazione Arnoldo e Alberto Mondadori, 2020
ISBN 978-88-85938-72-4
What reflections on their identity as women, intellectuals, and writers did Alba de Céspedes and Gianna Manzini pursue once they joined the catalog of one of Italy’s major publishers? What role did they play within the literary programming established by Arnoldo Mondadori and reimagined by Alberto Mondadori?
These are some of the questions that drive the author’s critical reading in this volume dedicated to the editorial correspondence between Arnoldo and Alberto Mondadori, on one side, and de Céspedes and Manzini, on the other.The first part of the volume presents a portrait of the two femmes de lettres, chosen as representatives of that second generation of 20th-century Italian women writers. Active in Rome between the two wars, they came of age in the post-war period, following unprecedented paths at a time when editorial and cultural power was still exclusively male-dominated, making their path to success arduous.
To fully convey this perspective “from her side” of the publishing house, the second part of the volume is dedicated to the voices and writing of the authors: all the letters cited throughout the study are reproduced in their entirety.
A selection from the hundreds of letters addressed by de Céspedes and Manzini to Arnoldo and Alberto, mostly preserved at the FAAM in its editorial and personal archives, which are now kept right alongside their publisher’s archive, as if to draw together the threads of a long, uninterrupted dialogue—that between a writer and a publisher.
