Diario di una piccola profuga friulana: episodi dell'invasione del Veneto, 1917 [Diary of a little Friulian refugee: episodes in the invasion of the Veneto, 1917]. New York: Il Carroccio, 1919.
Title
Diario di una piccola profuga friulana: episodi dell'invasione del Veneto, 1917 [Diary of a little Friulian refugee: episodes in the invasion of the Veneto, 1917]. New York: Il Carroccio, 1919.
Description
This "diario," with both dated and undated entries in November 1917 through the same month in 1918, is a memoir of Maria Luisa Francesconi, a refugee from Friuli to the U.S. Her travails within Italy by train to escape aerial bombardment of the Veneto are poignant. Entries were written in Ferrara and Ravenna, among other places.
It is a reprint of a story told in six issues of New York's Il Carroccio from August to December, 1919. The copyright is by Dolly Hotitchenko, who financed the flight of the author from the Veneto to the U.S. in the wake of its invasion in 1917. Its dedication, dated Modena, August 1919, is to the Queen of Italy, Elena of Savoy, also known as Elena of Montenegro.
The frontispiece photo (reproduced here) of the author as a girl with her five siblings appears to have hand-made ink entries in the margins of the names of the various children, and a kind of dedication to their father. (The original episodes in Il Carroccio are not part of the long run of the magazine in the collection; thus, I cannot verify whether these are indeed one-of-a-kind hand-made ink namings, but a crossout of the first letter in one of the names, "Rosetta," suggests a one-time, hand-written mistake in this copy.)
A search reveals no other publication in either the U.S. or in Italy by Francesconi, except for a 131-page version of this story, published in 2014 in her birthplace of Pordenone, entitled Addio! paese natio! diario di Maria Luisa Francesconi, piccola profuga pordenonese (1917). Libraries in Florence, Rome and Udine carry a copy of the 2014 reprint, noting the original date and publisher accurately.
It is a reprint of a story told in six issues of New York's Il Carroccio from August to December, 1919. The copyright is by Dolly Hotitchenko, who financed the flight of the author from the Veneto to the U.S. in the wake of its invasion in 1917. Its dedication, dated Modena, August 1919, is to the Queen of Italy, Elena of Savoy, also known as Elena of Montenegro.
The frontispiece photo (reproduced here) of the author as a girl with her five siblings appears to have hand-made ink entries in the margins of the names of the various children, and a kind of dedication to their father. (The original episodes in Il Carroccio are not part of the long run of the magazine in the collection; thus, I cannot verify whether these are indeed one-of-a-kind hand-made ink namings, but a crossout of the first letter in one of the names, "Rosetta," suggests a one-time, hand-written mistake in this copy.)
A search reveals no other publication in either the U.S. or in Italy by Francesconi, except for a 131-page version of this story, published in 2014 in her birthplace of Pordenone, entitled Addio! paese natio! diario di Maria Luisa Francesconi, piccola profuga pordenonese (1917). Libraries in Florence, Rome and Udine carry a copy of the 2014 reprint, noting the original date and publisher accurately.
Creator
Maria Luisa Francesconi
Publisher
Il Carroccio
Date
1919
Format
23 x 16cm; 64 p.
Language
Italian
Citation
Maria Luisa Francesconi, “Diario di una piccola profuga friulana: episodi dell'invasione del Veneto, 1917 [Diary of a little Friulian refugee: episodes in the invasion of the Veneto, 1917]. New York: Il Carroccio, 1919.,” Italian-Language American Imprints: The Periconi Collection, accessed April 19, 2024, https://italianamericanimprints.omeka.net/items/show/402.
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