Introduction to & explanation of Bibliography
Why a Bibliography, one that goes beyond what is in the Collection?
First, anyone looking at the Collection might wonder: What percentage of the entire universe of Italian-language Italian American works encompassed in the time period of the Collection - roughly, from 1880 through part of the post-World War II period - does the Collection in fact hold?
The answer is hard to say, because this bibliography is filled also with English-language works, but if we were just to take the Italian-language works: probably something far less than one-half of all such materials that once existed - perhaps 20 or 25% - are in the Collection, and that's counting as "in" the Collection magazines or newspapers of which the Collection actually may have only a few issues, not all of them.
Second, any reader of a particular author, moreover, can immediately check the answer to the question: how many other works did this author write and publish, whether in books or magazines/journal (to the extent this question was not directly addressed in my biographical note on any given writer), and whether in the U.S. or in Italy (quite a few authors did both)?
So, how did I decide what to put in this bibliography? After all, the primary decisions of any bibliographer are to define the scope of inclusion (and, therefore, exclusion) of the field to be covered, and the type of bibliographic apparatus to append to each work. The decision on the latter question I considered made by Francesco Durante, that is, to list merely author(s), title, year of publication, place of publication, and publisher’s name of what scholars call the “ideal” copy of the work (that is, a complete copy but not any particular copy). On the former question, it may also appear to readers of this translation of Durante’s monumental work that that decision of inclusion and exclusion was made in some final sense by him, and thus that the task of the bibliographic editor was simply to reformat entries in the original bibliography to conform to American citation style. That is not and could not be the case here.
As for primary works: First, I took as a challenge (and a charge) Durante’s prescient observation that his bibliography was undoubtedly incomplete, and his happy anticipation that new works—especially new primary works published in Italian during the period in question—would be found after publication of his work. As he stated in his introduction, in 2005:
I am perfectly aware that [this anthology] is “provisional,” a sort of permanent workshop constantly open to new research and further discoveries. . . . The book looks forward to other scholarly research that will go even deeper into the libraries and archives that I have visited (some seventy of them between Italy and the United States). And—why not?—perhaps a new author or title will be miraculously discovered. There are still thousands of attics to pick through and perhaps in a few of them a surviving copy of some lost novel by Bernardino Ciambelli or the typescript of some play by Riccardo Cordiferro or an unfindable volume of some lost Italian-American newspaper awaits us in silence.
Indeed, I have found many of these already, both in the preparation of the 2014 bibliography for the translation of Durante's work, Italoamericana: The Literature of the Great Migration, 1880-1943 (New York: Fordham U. Press, 2014), with about 10 years in between the original and translation, and subsequent to the publication of that volume. In expanding the body of works, whether with authors already in Durante, or completely new authors, my focus was virtually exclusively on the Italian-language work. In this task, I was very fortunate to have tools—an ever-expanding set of online resources—that were simply not available so fully (if at all) to Francesco Durante as they have been to me. As for English-language authors who were omitted from the original, or previously unknown works by included English-language authors, I did not add them even when those works fell firmly within the 1880–1943 time period of the book. (Post-1943 secondary works that illuminate pre-1943 work are, of course, included.) For this bibliographical update begun in 2024, I have gone beyond (but not much beyond) the end date of 1943 where it seemed important to do so, e.g., to add the works of Joseph Tusiani.
Other criteria arise from the definitional problems of “Italian American.” I continued (and thus added to) Durante’s practice of including Italian, as well as American, imprints, of primary works, so long as those reflect the experience or observations of those writers while in America and about their American experience. Italian language writers and speakers in America undoubtedly found it easier to find and deal with publishers and printers in their native Italy than with those in America. I agree with Durante that publication outside of the various United States should not be any kind of disqualifier from an “American” bibliography. Nor, for these purposes, was it relevant whether or not those writers themselves are considered (or considered themselves) “Italian American.”
As for those writers or observers firmly rooted in Italy, who published in Italian with their regular Italian publishers, based on their brief or somewhat brief tours of America, those whose writings had already commanded attention in Durante’s original for the perspicacity or literary qualities, for example, Edmondo Mayor des Planches, Ferdinando Fontana, Dario Papa, Mario Soldati and Amy Bernardy.
Furthermore, I added to Durante’s original bibliography any Italian-language American imprints that I found (and more selectively those published in Italy by the same author also publishing in America), whether those of authors already cited by Durante in the book or not. These include those several authors of Italian-language works exclusive to or more central to Martino Marazzi’s Voices in Italian America, such as Federico Mennella; and an entirely new pre-1943 author, my own discovery, Augusto Bassetti, which includes two works of fiction, 2 primers or primitive grammars, and one English-Italian dictionary.
As a result of this expansive approach, therefore, readers should be aware that particular works (and even particular authors) will now be reflected in the bibliography that are not discussed either in the Durante text, or even in the voluminous footnotes to the chapters. As to the latter, on several occasions, works mentioned in the notes in fuller discussions of the author in question did not gain entry into the bibliography proper, for no discernible reason; many of those works have also been added.
I also tried to ensure that I included any English-language American imprint of an Italian language original work, where the Italian edition alone had been cited by Durante, to make a copy of the work easier to find and more accessible for English-language readers.
For English-language original books, I ensured that the original work only was cited rather than the typically later Italian-language translation cited by Durante for his Italian audience, since the English original would be more available as well as accessible to English language readers.
Secondary works or scholarship: the original bibliography in Italoamericana is rich in secondary works—particularly useful with the political literature—and I have expanded that, with one limitation: The explosion of such work just in the last eleven years (since actual preparation by Francesco Durante of the core of his bibliography) made it impractical, if not impossible, to include all such newly published scholarly works on the “history and literature of the Italians in the United States.” However, I have included as much of the new scholarly literature as possible where the focus of such new work is on the literature of the Italians in America (as opposed to their history) with particular attention to those works that treat the literature written and published in Italian (whether in the United States or in Italy or elsewhere). This same principle holds true for post-2014 scholarship.
I excluded both primary and secondary works in certain cases. Because of the explosion of reprinting by digitization of even relatively obscure works printed in Italian in the United States, I decided that searching for and adding an entry about the republication by Kessinger Publishing, Nabu Books, Gyan Books, Kirtas Publishing or, of course, the HathiTrust and Google Books—to name only the most prominent companies or libraries in this business—of individual works would be unduly time-consuming and, more important, would surely become outdated by the time of publication because of the rapid expansion of this practice, and the availability in about two weeks time of so many out-of-print (and especially out-of-copyright) works.
I urge readers looking for the entire texts of both Italian-original as well as English-original works excerpted in this volume to look to these providers of reprints for what may be a very pleasant surprise.
So, to sum up: To Francesco Durante’s original observation that “perhaps a new author or title will be miraculously discovered,” I say simply that I have been lucky enough in the years since he wrote these words to be blessed by quite a few such discoveries, so as to be able to add to the 2014 translation of Italoamericana, and many more in the 10 or so years since that time. It is a measure of the gracious and generous man (as well as redoubtable scholar) that Francesco is—as well as a huge personal pleasure for me—that he would always express his excitement and pleasure at such discoveries of any “work not in Durante,” and sometimes to be able to observe that excitement and the care with which he would cradle in his hands any such new find of which I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to show him a copy in person. Grazie mille, Francesco!