L'assassinio della contessa Trigona: ovvero, il delitto del tenente Paternò, romanzo intimo-contemporaneo passionale, illustrated [The Assassination of the Contessa Trigona: or, The Crime of Lieutenant Paternò, Intimate-Contemporary Passionate Novel][Facsimile]. New York: Italian Book Company, 1912.
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A real life story: Vincenzo Paternò del Cugno, a Sicilian baron who was always short on money, killed his lover, the Countess Giulia, in Rome in March 1911, when she refused to give him any more money and broke off their extra-marital relationship. Married to Count Trigona, the Countess was a member of the Sicilian nobility, a lady in waiting to the Queen of Italy who was in Rome attending to the queen when she met with Paternò one last time, in a seedy hotel. Her sister was married to Tomasi di Lampedusa, whose one work Il gattopardo (The Leopard) — a signal landmark in Italian literary history — itself centered on the decline of the ancient Sicilian nobility.
As discussed more fully in the description of the 1944 edition of this work, when he got out of prison thirty years later, Paternò was once again broke. He tried to cash in on his story: he wrote to De Martino for money: the last letter in the series is Paternò’s thank you to De Martino for a new suit and other gifts.
Antonio De Martino (not the company) held the copyright for the original of this facsimile of the 1912 first edition of this work (with the long subtitle). De Martino was clever enough to obtain, on behalf of the company, the copyright to tell this story as early as that time, just after the events of 1911 discussed above, while the murderer was in prison. This facsimile copy of the 1912 edition seems to be the only edition before the 1944 actual copy in the collection; copies of the latter become available for purchase with some regularity, suggesting its popularity.There is also no evidence suggesting that the pseudonym (Duchessa X) of the nominal author in 1944 - just “Duchessa” in this 1912 original edition - was anyone other than the enterprising De Martino himself.
The work is illustrated by Giovanni Abys; the same illustrations appear, though in different places, in the much more commonly found 1944 edition. Abys (as John not Giovanni) also illustrated Salvatore Sturiale's Storia della Sicilia Antica, q.v.
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