Così parlò Mister Nature: fatti e impressioni di un italiano in America [Thus spoke Mr. Nature: Events and Impressions of an Italian in America]. Bologna: Licinio Cappelli, 1953.

02-18_A.jpg
02-18_B.jpg

Title

Così parlò Mister Nature: fatti e impressioni di un italiano in America [Thus spoke Mr. Nature: Events and Impressions of an Italian in America]. Bologna: Licinio Cappelli, 1953.

Description

Eugenio Camillo Branchi (b. Genoa, 1883 - d. 1962) was a distinguished journalist, a contributor to the Corriere dell Sera, among other publications.

In 1915, he was a second in a duel for the "cold and Nordic" anarchist lawyer Francesco Saverio Merlino, q.v. (Il fine del anarchismo?) who had challenged the then director of the Popolo d'Italia, the "suave and dashing" Mussolini, in Branchi's telling in a 1927 issue of Agostino De Biasi's Il Carroccio, q.v.

Shortly before the First World War, he attempted a journey around the world, interrupted in Lima, Peru, because he contracted a tropical disease. He served as a navy officer during the First World War, and between 1924 and 1927 he taught Romance languages and literature at the College of William and Mary, which was the first college in the U.S. to have courses in the Italian language, according to Joseph Fucilla, The Teaching of Italian in the United States (1967), with Carlo Bellini (in 1778). Branchi himself wrote about Bellini on the occasion of the 150th anniversary, in 1929, of Bellini's appointment. From 1928 until 1936 or so, Branchi was secretary of the Italian Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco, and taught at the University of San Francisco.

He was author of novellas, and collaborator of both nationalistic and pro-fascist  journals (Agostino De Biasi's Il Carroccio), as well as those of the left (Ernesto Valentini, q.v., journalist and lawyer at the L'Araldo Italiano). Martino Marazzi's Voices of Italian America: a History of Early italian American Literature with a Critical Anthology (Madison, 2004) contains an excerpt from his work in translation (Hold up!, Il Carroccio, Vol. 24, no. 8, Aug. 1926).

His list of non-fiction publications about America is also long, reflecting in part his friendship with Giovanni Ermenegildo Schiavo, q.v., one of the first historians (self-taught) of the Italian American experience. See, e.g., Il primato degli italiani nella storia e nella civiltà americana: il breviario degli italiani d'America, which is also in the Collection.

Creator

E.C. Branchi

Publisher

Licinio Cappelli

Date

1953

Format

20 x 13.5cm; 242 p.

Language

Italian

Citation

E.C. Branchi, “Così parlò Mister Nature: fatti e impressioni di un italiano in America [Thus spoke Mr. Nature: Events and Impressions of an Italian in America]. Bologna: Licinio Cappelli, 1953.,” Italian-Language American Imprints: The Periconi Collection, accessed March 29, 2024, https://italianamericanimprints.omeka.net/items/show/21.

Output Formats

Geolocation

Comments

Allowed tags: <p>, <a>, <em>, <strong>, <ul>, <ol>, <li>