Il Carroccio (The Italian Review): rivista di coltura propaganda e difesa italiana in America, Anno I, Vol. II, Nos. 7-12. New York: Il Carroccio Publishing Co., Agosto [August] - Dicembre [December] 1915.

While it would appear that this second volume should contain six issues - July through December - this volume only contains five issues, beginning with August; the last issue (December) is a double issue, numbered 11-12. It is unclear if July was skipped, as we do not have the earlier (first half of year) volume.

Agostino de Biasi (b. Sant’Angelo dei Lombardi [Avellino], 1875; d. New York, 1964) was in Italy the editor of the newspaper L’Eco dell’Ofanto (named after the Ofanto, a river that flows through Avellino) before immigrating to the United States in November 1900 to become managing editor of the newspaper Il Progresso Italo-Americano (1900–1904; 1906–1911). De Biasi founded the conservative newspaper L’Opinione in Philadelphia during his hiatus from Il Progresso, and also ran the newspaper Il Telegrafo, bringing monarchist principles to all the newspapers he wrote for or directed.

In 1915, on the eve of Italy’s entrance into World War I, de Biasi founded Il Carroccio, a monthly, which he directed, with a regular correspondent in Rome, Enrico Corradini. The first issue announced his belief that “Italian emigrants — intellectuals and workers, those who are real Italians both in relation to foreigners and within themselves — must undertake the task of defending the name of Italy by voice and with the pen, just as their brothers are charged with the defense of the frontier with their weapons.”

This serial publication also exhorted Italian Americans to return to Italy and fight against the central powers, though de Biasi never himself returned to Italy to do so. Slowly Il Carroccio turned more fascist under his direction: he used the  April 30, 1921 issue to establish the New York Fascio (NYF), a fascist program comprised mainly of war veterans and former syndicalists.

But some time later, believing himself to have a “pure Fascist conscience,” de Biasi resigned from the NYF. When Il Carroccio began to publish confidential information, the Partito Nazionale Fascista (National Fascist Party, PNF) expelled de Biasi, and a fascist boycott against Il Carroccio may be said to have ruined the magazine.

De Biasi appealed to Mussolini for re-entrance into the PNF in 1930, which was granted in 1933. Il Carroccio, however, long eclipsed by Il Grido della Stirpe in popularity among American fascist sympathizers, never regained its popularity, and was officially discontinued in 1935.

Its politics notwithstanding, Il Carroccio played a positive role in promoting non-political, Italian-language, American literary output, especially from two talented women writers, Dora Colonna and Caterina Maria Avella; excerpts from novellas that each can be found in translation in the American edition of Durante. The magazine thus fairly enough called itself, on the cover of every issue, a “rivista di coltura” (magazine of culture), as well as one of “propaganda e difesa Italiana in America” (propaganda and defense of Italy in America).

Happily, this bound volume (unlike the many library-bound volumes in the run of issues in the Collection up to 1932) contains the striking color covers of each issue.

See further description and history of the magazine in the hyperlinked "main entry," the last in the list below.