Italian Lessons. New York: Italian Book Company New York, 1914 [copyright].

"New & Revised edition. " This "new and revised edition [was] printed from new plates." (From "new plates" is the very definition of a new edition.) This work is designed for the native English speaker eager to learn Italian, and, as I have suggested in several descriptions on this site, may also have been designed in part to help the English-schooled children of Italian immigrants reclaim the language of their parents, although the copies I have examined of various editions of this work do not bear this out.

While no date other than the original Italian Book Company copyright date of 1914 appears, my hunch is that this new edition is a second edition, perhaps dating from the late teens.

It would not be until an Eighth edition in 1933 - 24 years after the original 1909 publication -  that the reader would be reminded that despite the 1914 date that appears in every edition (the Fifth and Seventh before the Eighth are in the collection), there was an earlier copyright by another publisher, namely, Francesco Tocci, in 1909.

Alfonso Arbib-Costa

Italian Book Company New York

1914 [copyright]

18.5x13cm; 302 p.

English