Libreria Sociale de "La Parola [del Popolo]" [Social Bookstore of "La Parola" [newspaper]]. Chicago: Italian Labor Publishing Co., [n.d.].

Libreria Sociale de "La Parola [del Popolo]" [Social Bookstore of "La Parola" [newspaper]]. Chicago: Italian Labor Publishing Co., [n.d.].

This twice-folded single sheet 8-page catalogue of books contains works sold by the Social Bookstore attached to the newspaper La Parola del Popolo. Like the Italian Labor Publishing Company that published and printed it, La Parola was located at 1011 Blue Island Avenue in Chicago. I find no record of its existence in WorldCat or elsewhere.

It is undated but post-dates 1922, when the ever-changing named La Parola assumed the name of "La Parola del Popolo." See in the Collection: La parola del popolo: rivista bimestrale:  Cinquantesimo (50) Anniversario 1908-1958, published in Chicago in 1958 by what had become "La Parola del Popolo Publishing Association."

The Social Bookstore probably served a similar purpose as the Libreria Sociologica of Paterson, New Jersey, a gathering place for intellectuals, especially anarchists, to choose from among a vast array of publications, by literary as well as radical Italians and non-Italians. A university education could be add by reading what was for sale there.

So, in the case of the instant catalogue, among the authors whose works were for sale were many literary Italians, such as Carducci, Rapisardi, Ariosto and of course Dante, but also French and Russian writers like Emile Zola and Leo Tolstoy, as well as radical Italians writing and working in the U.S. such as Giuseppe Bertelli, Pietro Gori, Vincenzo Vacirca, Luigi Fabbri, Alberico Molinari and others. There were many radical or philosophical non-Italian writers- French, German and Russian - whose works were available in translation, such as Engels, as well as Marx & Engels, Gorki, Faure, Lenin and Kant, among others.