Segretario amoroso italiano-inglese [Romantic Secretary (Italian-English)]. New York: Italian Book Company, 1945.
Title
Segretario amoroso italiano-inglese [Romantic Secretary (Italian-English)]. New York: Italian Book Company, 1945.
Description
The "secretary" like this one, filled with "model" business and social letters in both Italian and English, was surely a best seller for the Italian Book Company - Società Libraria Italiana: witness the variety of such works just by the IBC alone. For example, De Martino also wrote (with Violetta Sironi) a Segretario speciale per la corrispondenza delle madri, spose, fidanzati con i figli, mariti, fidanzati in italiano.
Note the clothing worn by the lovers on the cover of the book, obviously a far cry from the clothing immigrants or indeed any Americans ever wore in the 20th or even 19th century. For an excellent discussion of the long tradition in Italy of such works that Italian American publishers followed, see Mary Anne Trasciatti, "Letter Writing in an Italian Immigrant Community: A Transatlantic Tradition," Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 39.1 (Jan. 2009), 73-94. Immigrant Italians struggling to learn both standard Italian as well as English were surely in the greatest need of such aids. Although the quality of the English versions of the letters is uneven, to put it charitably, one must remember the residual oral society from which most of the immigrants came.
Note the advertisement, which appears on the back cover, for another IBC work, The Amorous Adventures of Casanova: Italian men in New York could thereby be encouraged to believe they too could have "amorous adventures" like Casanova if only they knew how to write letters such as appeared in the Segretario amoroso italiano-inglese as a result of buying and deploying the tools provided by that book!
Note the clothing worn by the lovers on the cover of the book, obviously a far cry from the clothing immigrants or indeed any Americans ever wore in the 20th or even 19th century. For an excellent discussion of the long tradition in Italy of such works that Italian American publishers followed, see Mary Anne Trasciatti, "Letter Writing in an Italian Immigrant Community: A Transatlantic Tradition," Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 39.1 (Jan. 2009), 73-94. Immigrant Italians struggling to learn both standard Italian as well as English were surely in the greatest need of such aids. Although the quality of the English versions of the letters is uneven, to put it charitably, one must remember the residual oral society from which most of the immigrants came.
Note the advertisement, which appears on the back cover, for another IBC work, The Amorous Adventures of Casanova: Italian men in New York could thereby be encouraged to believe they too could have "amorous adventures" like Casanova if only they knew how to write letters such as appeared in the Segretario amoroso italiano-inglese as a result of buying and deploying the tools provided by that book!
Creator
Antonio De Martino
R. Pucelli, trans.
Publisher
Italian Book Company
Date
1945
Format
21 x 13.5cm; 96 p.
Language
Italian
Citation
Antonio De Martino and R. Pucelli, trans., “Segretario amoroso italiano-inglese [Romantic Secretary (Italian-English)]. New York: Italian Book Company, 1945.,” Italian-Language American Imprints: The Periconi Collection, accessed April 19, 2024, https://italianamericanimprints.omeka.net/items/show/150.
Comments