Prof. Cinzia Scarpino (Università degli Studi di Milano): "Gone with the Wind/Via vol vento/Vom Winde Verweht: The Italian (and German) Publication History of an American Bestseller"

Monday, May 22, 2023, 10:15-11:45 a.m., OK8/02.04

The most successful escapist novel in Fascist Italy, Gone with the Wind (1936), was translated for the Mondadori publishing house within one year after the American publication and became an immediate bestseller. By drawing specifically on the archival materials at the Mondadori Foundation (editorial correspondence, reading reports, print runs, covers), this talk sketched out the book’s Italian publishing history and cultural context and trace some possible analogies with its (pre-war) German publishing trajectory.    

Cinzia Scarpino is Assistant Professor of American Literature at the University of Milan. Her research interests and publications range from American literature of the 1930s and of the second half of the 20^th century to environmental history and screen studies. Her latest research project on the Italian publishing history of American fiction and non-fiction (1930-1980) was published as Dear Mr. Mondadori: La Narrativa americana nel catalogo Mondadori 1930-1968 and has been supported by the Bogliasco Foundation and the Fondazione Mondadori, as well as by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung.