<em><strong>Spose di guerra: dramma in un atto</strong> </em>[War Brides: drama in one act]. <strong>New York: Casa ed. "Il Martello", [1915].</strong>
This feminist, anti-war play is the best known work of socialist and suffragette Wentworth (b. 1872 - d. 1942); it's a topic that would have appealed to Carlo Tresca, proprietor of <em>Il Martello</em> and its book publishing arm. Tresca also used the "Libreria Rossa" imprint (see below), e.g., in other publishing, including his magazine <em>Guardia Rossa</em>. q.v. <br /><br />The story of the play is of a war bride widow who commits suicide rather than bear more children for a nation that allows her no say in its decision-making about war. It was one of the most successful plays in its original English of 1915. Its translation into Italian seems to have been done in the same year. It is the sort of play that Italians would have loved to perform in Primo Maggio celebrations.<br /><br />For Italian performances, the reader was direced to "our representative Paolo Valera" in Milan. Seven years later, <em>Il Martello</em> would publish <em>Il fascismo</em> of Valera (b. Como 1850 - d. Milano 1926), who was a prolific journalist and novelist. The translation of Wentworth's play was authorized by Zino Fioretti.<br /><br />It is one of two works that <em>Il Martello</em> translated from English into Italian that we have found. The other is Eugene Lyons' <em>Vita e morte di Sacco e Vanzetti</em> (Il Martello, 1928), q.v., based on the English original published in 1927 by International Publishers, q.v. <br /><br />A particularly interesting feature of the current work is that it includes four photographs drawn from the production with Madam Alla Nazimova in the leading role.<br /><br />This imprint is somewhat more lavishly produced, especially on better quality paper, than many <em>Il Martello</em> publications. It was printed by the De Pamphilis Press of 51 Greenwich Avenue in New York City. <br /><br />De Pamphilis had also printed a 1909 work of the other Tresca imprint, the Libreria Rossa, entitled <em>Il mondo e le sue trasformazioni: dialoghi fra il nonno e la sua nepote </em>by Paraf-Javal, translated from the French original, q.v. <br /><br />The name "Libreria Rossa" name adorned Carlo Tresca letterhead, at least in 1919, see holographic letter of Tresca's in the collection. So De Pamphilis may have done work for Tresca under whichever of his imprints he happened to be using.<br /><br />Besides this work, and the Paraf-Javal translation, Libreria Rossa also published, in 1921, <em>Se si farà la rivoluzione in Italia, si morrà di fame? </em>There is also an association of the name "Libreria Rossa" with that of Elvira Catello, a New York bookseller and book publisher. See description of another work in the Collection, <em>Il mondo e le sue trasformazioni: dialoghi fra il nonno e la sua nepote,</em> which was also published by De Pamphilis Press.<br /><br />Finally, "Librerie Rosse" - the plural, Red Bookstores - was a term used generally to described leftist bookstores in the Italian communities of the U.S.
Marion Craig Wentworth
Copyright The Century Co., 1915; translation "authorized" by Zino Fioretti.
Casa ed. "Il Martello"
[1915]
20 x 13.5cm; 70 p.
Italian
<strong><em>Il mondo e le sue trasformazioni: dialoghi fra il nonno e la sua nepote</em></strong> [The World and its Transformations: dialogues between a grandpa and his granddaughter]. <strong>New York: Libreria Rossa, 1909.</strong>
This work has inconsistent bibliographic information: the date of 1909 is that of the publication of this work by the Libreria Rossa of Elivira Catello, q.v., who most libraries state as the publisher (U. Minn, U. Michigan, IISH (Amsterdam)). But Carlo Tresca also listed "Libreria Rossa" on his <em>Il Martello</em> letterhead, see holographic letter of Carlo Tresca from 1919 in the collection. Finally, Italian libraries put the Catello publication date at 1946, but that is clearly too late; another has publication by the Scuola Moderna, in 1912, but of Bologna, not Barcelona, see below. <br /><br />The stated author (sometimes also called "Péji") was the <em>nom de plume</em> of Georges Matthias, a French writer (1858-1941), who began as a sort of socialist but became an anarchist-individualist. This work was part of the publisher's <em>Propaganda Educativa</em> series. <br /><br />Under the subtitle on the cover it is noted that "These dialogues were compiled on the outlines of the book which, with the title Cartilla, seved as the book of letters for the pupils of the Scuola Moderna founded by Francisco Ferrer at Barcelona, IV Edition." <br /><br />Printed by De Pamphilis Press, 51 Greenwich Avenue in New York City, which also printed <em>Spose di guerra: dramma in un atto</em>, q.v., published by Tresca's Il Martello press.
Paraf-Javal
Libreria Rossa
1909
18 x12 cm; 36 p.
Italian