How Literary Agents Made Italian Publishing Transnational: An Interview with Anna Ferrando – Journal of the History of Ideas blog with Rose Facchini

Anna Ferrando is a researcher in Contemporary History at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Pavia, Italy. Her work explores the relationship between publishing and politics from a transnational perspective, focusing chiefly on twentieth-century cultural mediators. She edited a volume on translations under Fascism, Stranieri all’ombra del Duce. Le traduzioni durante il fascismo [Foreigners in the Shadow of the Duce: Translations During Fascism] (FrancoAngeli, 2019). She recently published a history of the Adelphi publishing house, titled Adelphi. Le origini di una casa editrice (1938–1994) [Adelphi: The Origins of a Publishing House, 1938–1994] (Carocci, 2023). Her interview with Rose Facchini explores all of these themes, centering on Ferrando’s Cacciatori di libri. Gli agenti letterari durante il fascismo [Book Hunters: Literary Agents under Fascism] (FrancoAngeli, 2019), which was awarded the SISSCO Prize for “Best Debut Book” by the Italian Society for the Study of Contemporary History.

The use of archives of literary agents is really interesting – later this month I’ll share what I found out about Foucault’s early English translations in the archives of the Georges Borchardt literary agency. [Update: now available here.]