Dizionario moderno Italiano-Inglese, Vol. I/Modern Italian-English Dictionary, Vol. II [Facsimile]. New York: Società Libraria Italiana, 1916.
Title
Dizionario moderno Italiano-Inglese, Vol. I/Modern Italian-English Dictionary, Vol. II [Facsimile]. New York: Società Libraria Italiana, 1916.
Description
At 471 pages, this Italian-English dictionary, Volume 1, is immediately followed by a Volume 2, an English-Italian one, though called "Modern Italian-English Dictionary," weighing in at 348 pages. It was one of the earliest of the "made in America" dictionaries that attempted to supplant the imports from Italy, such as the Millhouse.
One oddity is that the author's name as listed on the title pages of each of the two volumes (in one) is slightly different: Vol. I lists author as "Dott. Gaetano F. Lisanti," but in Vol. II, the author is listed as "Dr. Cajetan F. Lisanti."
As is evident from its page length, this dictionary is far more complete than the dictionary that Augusto Bassetti created 27 years before, in 1889, also in New York, and thus seems more likely to have succeeded in providing a robust and useful dictionary as the much greater number of Italians in the City and clearly rooted in America (and thus needing a more substantial vocabulary for their land of adoption).
However, unlike the grammars published by the same publisher, the IBC, and others in this same period, the dictionary does not appear, from a review in OCLC, to have gone through multiple editions. A copy of the original (this collection has only a facsimile copy) is, interestingly, in the British Library, where not many Italian-American imprints can be found.
For more context about the significance of dictionaries in the Italian American community, please see my essays on this website: "Augusto Bassetti and the First English Grammar for Italian Speakers Written and Published in the United States" and "Italian American Book Publishing and Bookselling."
Lisanti's contract with the Italian Book Company to write this dictionary is among the business papers of the IBC at the IHRC in Minnesota.
Some years later, Lisanti also authored La crisi sociale da Cristo a Mussolini [The social crisis from Christ to Mussolini], published in New York by the Cocce Bros. in 1933, q.v.
One oddity is that the author's name as listed on the title pages of each of the two volumes (in one) is slightly different: Vol. I lists author as "Dott. Gaetano F. Lisanti," but in Vol. II, the author is listed as "Dr. Cajetan F. Lisanti."
As is evident from its page length, this dictionary is far more complete than the dictionary that Augusto Bassetti created 27 years before, in 1889, also in New York, and thus seems more likely to have succeeded in providing a robust and useful dictionary as the much greater number of Italians in the City and clearly rooted in America (and thus needing a more substantial vocabulary for their land of adoption).
However, unlike the grammars published by the same publisher, the IBC, and others in this same period, the dictionary does not appear, from a review in OCLC, to have gone through multiple editions. A copy of the original (this collection has only a facsimile copy) is, interestingly, in the British Library, where not many Italian-American imprints can be found.
For more context about the significance of dictionaries in the Italian American community, please see my essays on this website: "Augusto Bassetti and the First English Grammar for Italian Speakers Written and Published in the United States" and "Italian American Book Publishing and Bookselling."
Lisanti's contract with the Italian Book Company to write this dictionary is among the business papers of the IBC at the IHRC in Minnesota.
Some years later, Lisanti also authored La crisi sociale da Cristo a Mussolini [The social crisis from Christ to Mussolini], published in New York by the Cocce Bros. in 1933, q.v.
Creator
Gaetano F. Lisanti
Publisher
Societa Libraria Italiana
Date
1916
Format
24.5 x 18.5cm; 471 p. (Vol. I); 348 p. (Vol. II)
Language
Italian
Citation
Gaetano F. Lisanti, “Dizionario moderno Italiano-Inglese, Vol. I/Modern Italian-English Dictionary, Vol. II [Facsimile]. New York: Società Libraria Italiana, 1916.,” Italian-Language American Imprints: The Periconi Collection, accessed April 25, 2024, https://italianamericanimprints.omeka.net/items/show/431.
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