Italiani di America: Enciclopedia Biografica [Italians in America: Biographical Encyclopedia]. New York: Cocce Brothers, 1936.

Italiani di America: Enciclopedia Biografica [Italians in America: Biographical Encyclopedia]. New York: Cocce Brothers, 1936.

Flamma (b. Cattomosetta, Sicily, 1882; d. New York, 1961) first emigrated to the United States in 1909. During the First World War, he was a volunteer with the American army. He lived in Chicago, where he worked as secretary of the Italian Chamber of Commerce, and then in New York, where between 1922 and 1924, he was the director of Il Vaglio (Screen).

Flamma included biographical entries for writers and other literary types, printers (e.g., the Cocce brothers), publishers, and artists - (indeed, “pubblicista,” free-lance journalist, is perhaps the profession that appears most frequently in the work); and one can learn about musicians of the time, such as Salvatore Iodice, the composer of Giuseppe Cadicamo’s opera La Montanina.

Flamma thus performed a real service for researchers on the lives of Italian Americans beyond the businessmen, lawyers and doctors who make up the bulk of entries in Giovanni Schiavo's otherwise useful Who's Who of Italian Americans, issued annually between 1935 and 1967.

After its publication in 1936, this work was reissued as “Volume II” in 1941 (by S. F. Vanni) and as “Volume III” in 1949 (again by Cocce, this latter volume in the collection), with some additions and deletions. Only the University of Minnesota seems to have Vol. II.

The collection also contains several volumes of Flamma's plays in Italian and English, q.v.

 

Ario Flamma

Cocce Brothers

1936

23 x 16cm; 367 p.

Italian