ABSTRACT
What does a study of immigrant foreign-language book culture teach us about the social reality of Italian immigrants to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century? We ask this from a bibliographic perspective, broadly conceived, that is, from examining the economic and social conditions of Italian-language book authorship, production, advertising, distribution, reception, selling at retail, and the evolution of this business from beginnings in the late nineteenth century until after World War II—in effect, bibliography as the sociology of texts. 1 We focus on New York City book publishers/importers and booksellers because of their predominance, but also discuss the most important city outside of New York that reflected a nationwide business competition, namely, San Francisco. Do the popular grammars, “encyclopedias,” book catalogues, “secretaries” (books of model business and social letters) and directories, as well as the imaginative works and histories the community’s writers produced, help us understand how these immigrants presented themselves to the world, revealed who they were and who they were becoming, intentionally or otherwise?
