Stanco’s eloquence and pessimism are amply illustrated in Il diavolo biondo. Martino Marazzi's Voices of Italian America: a History of Early Italian American Literature with a Critical Anthology (Madison, 2004) contains an excerpt from this work in…
This parody by Seneca (b. Benevento, 1890 - d. Philadelphia, 1952), a professor of languages at the University of Pennsylvania, reflects the bitter laugh of early Italian American comedy. It is filled with a corrupted version of dialect, along with…
Dedicated to Riccardo Cordiferro. Pucciu (b. Italy, 1876; d. New York, 1927), or Puccio, was a sculptor and carver, with a studio in Brooklyn, as well as an accomplished dialect poet who began to publish verses in the literary and political magazine,…
De Rosalia was a leader in the Italian American vaudeville scene in New York. He premiered on the New York stage in 1903, shortly after his arrival in America. In 1904, he became a teacher in the New York public schools, and gave English lessons to…
This copy inscribed by author to the writer Anna Lannutti in 1933, like La vendetta. This copy lacks covers or a title page. This work tells a story of Italy in 1840s & 1850s. This comic satire — the title is a play on words, as “prisco” means…
Inscribed by author, as with the copy of Il prisco cavaliere in the collection, to the "scrittrice [writer] Anna Lannutti, con sincera ammirazione/Riccardo Cordiferro/ 22 gennaio, 1933."Of interest is that Lannutti's verses had just appeared in the…
The leader of the Italian Committee for the Defense of Immigrants, Edward Corsi (b. Capestrano (L'Aquila) 1896 - d. New York 1965) immigrated to the U.S. in 1907 at the age of ten with his mother and step-father. A studious boy, he frequented Harlem…
This later edition, the most commonly available one (dated 1965), lacks the biographical entry at the outset, the ads at the end, and most of the Italian-language material. However, it does contain Caruso’s letters in the Italian original,…
This is the rare first edition of a series of editions of this popular collection of caricatures drawn by the great Neapolitan tenor, Enrico Caruso (b. Naples, 1873; d. Naples, 1921). La Follia di New York published Caruso’s caricatures in individual…
Ludovico (really Michele) Caminita (b. Palermo, 1878 - d. New York 1943?) had one of the lengthiest, most varied and colorful lives of all the Italian anarchists in America, starting or writing a number of newspapers (with politics ranging from left…