Italian Lessons. New York: Italian Book Company, 1933.

Eighth Edition.

Arbib-Costa (b. Livorno, 1882; active, New York, 1900–1930), professor of romance languages at the College of the City of New York, wrote texts designed to help students of English and Italian. This work would appear to be designed not for immigrant Italians but for Americans who wanted to learn Italian. 

Here, as with Pecorini's Grammatica enciclopedia, I adhere to G. Thomas Tanselle's dictum about the importance of collecting every edition of any work that you believes holds any importance, if you really want to do bibliographic history. The collection has the "New and Improved Edition," perhaps the equivalent of a second edition, and the Fifth, Seventh and Eighth editions, ranging from 1914 (or perhaps a few years later) up to at least 1933. Clearly this work was popular among English speakers. We are looking for the missing editions!

First published in 1909 by Francesco Tocci at his Emporium Press in New York, the converse work, Lezioni graduate di lingua inglese [Graded lessons in the English language] was written in Italian to teach English to Italians and was reprinted for decades afterwards by Tocci’s later venture with Antonio De Martino and others, the Società Libraria Italiana, the most important of all the Italian language publishers in America. Società Libraria Italiana and the Italian Book Company are one and the same.

Alfonso Arbib-Costa

Italian Book Company New York

1933

19x14cm; 299 p.

English