Italica Press

Last updated
Italica Press
ItalicaLogo.jpg
Founded1985
FounderEileen Gardiner and Ronald G. Musto
Country of origin United States
Headquarters location New York City
Publication types Books, E-books
Official website www.italicapress.com/index.html

Italica Press was founded in New York in 1985 by Eileen Gardiner and Ronald G. Musto. The press, now in its fourth decade, publishes English translations of works from the Middle Ages and Renaissance and English translations of contemporary Italian literature. [1] It also publishes essays and collected essays in the study of art and history. It specializes in urban studies, medieval pilgrimage, medieval romances and chansons de geste, women writers, fiction, poetry, short stories and plays.

Over the years it has maintained its editorial goal of publishing an average of six titles a year, [2] and its catalog now lists about 130 titles [3] with nearly 400 authors, editors and translators. [4] Italica's list is developed directly from submitted proposals. [5]

Italica has published works by Torquato Tasso, Giovanni Boccaccio, Guido Cavalcanti, Francesco Petrarch, Gaspara Stampa, Grazia Deledda, Luigi Pirandello, Massimo Bontempelli, Aldo Palazzeschi, Vasco Pratolini, Anna Maria Ortese, and Dacia Maraini among many others. [6] Italica also publishes a series of scholarly essays, "Studies in Art & History," with volumes dedicated to scholars such as Aldus Manutius, Paul Oskar Kristeller, Eugene F. Rice, Jr., William S. Heckscher, Irving Lavin, Marilyn Aronberg Lavin and Sarah Blake McHam. [7]

As a small press in the 1980s, Italica was recognized for its innovative approach to publishing, [8] making early use of Macintosh computers and laser printers to produce pages with the look of hot type and other elements of traditional fine printing, while many university and scholarly presses were shooting from camera-ready pages produced on typewriters. [9] In the early days of Italica Press, the only digital fonts available were Courier, Helvetica, Times and Symbol, but slowly a full range of fonts became available. [10] Its first book, The Revolution of Cola di Rienzo, appeared in 1986 complete with one of the first full book indexes generated electronically. Italica's pages were produced physically on a laser printer and then sent for tradition offset printing to one of the several specialized printers then in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Art was produced on Velox paper by photostat machines and traditional methods and pasted onto "flats." In 1992, Italica produced its first book created entirely in Aldus Pagemaker; appropriately it was a tribute to the Renaissance scholar and printer Aldus Manutius. [11] It contained dozens of illustrations and a foreword by the president of Aldus Corporation, Paul Brainerd, citing the importance of this Italica Press publication. [12]

In 1993, Italica Press became one of the earliest ebook publishers with its The Marvels of Rome for the Macintosh, which was a HyperCard edition of a medieval pilgrim’s guide to the city, the Mirabilia Urbis Romae. [13] In a 1994 review, Architronic stated: “it is an enjoyable demonstration of the future of HyperCard programming, when interactive layers will make innovative approaches to thinking about texts possible.” By 1995, Italica's tenth anniversary, it was also using personal computers to manage its entire business — from order processing to mailing list management and advertising design. [14] By the 1990s, Italica was producing and sending digital-only files to printers.

By 1995, the press was among the first to use extensively the new technologies of short-run digital printing and print-on-demand. In 2001, it published one of the first digital archival collections on CD-Rom, The Records of the Venetian Senate, 1335-1400. It was edited by Benjamin G. Kohl and included 4,389 archival records. [15] By 2010 it had embraced the possibilities of online publishing with open access titles, maps (for instance for Irish pilgrimage and medieval Naples), image galleries and bibliographies. The 2014 publication of William Tronzo's Petrarch’s Two Gardens: Landscape and the Image of Movement marked the beginning of a new phase of Italica's publication program with the introduction of color art to interior pages. Italica Press has long prided itself on its strong editorial work, the design of its books [16] and the growth of its backlist, where no title ever goes out of print. Almost all its titles are now available as Amazon Kindle ebooks, as well as in print. In summer 2017, many Italica Press titles were selected for online publication through JSTOR.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aldine Press</span> Venetian printing office

The Aldine Press was the printing office started by Aldus Manutius in 1494 in Venice, from which were issued the celebrated Aldine editions of the classics. The first book that was dated and printed under his name appeared in 1495.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pietro Bembo</span> Italian scholar, poet, and cardinal

Pietro Bembo, O.S.I.H. was a Venetian scholar, poet, and literary theorist who also was a member of the Knights Hospitaller, and a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. As an intellectual of the Italian Renaissance, Pietro Bembo greatly influenced the development of the Tuscan dialect as a literary language for poetry and prose, which, by later codification into a standard language, became the modern Italian language. In the 16th century, Bembo's poetry, essays and books proved basic to reviving interest in the literary works of Petrarch. In the field of music, Bembo's literary writing techniques helped composers develop the techniques of musical composition that made the madrigal the most important secular music of 16th-century Italy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aldus Corporation</span> Desktop publishing software company

Aldus Corporation was an American software company best known for its pioneering desktop publishing software. PageMaker, the company's most well-known product, ushered in the modern era of desktop computers such as the Macintosh seeing widespread use in the publishing industry. Paul Brainerd, the company's co-founder, coined the term desktop publishing to describe this paradigm. The company also originated the Tag Image File Format (TIFF) file format, widely used in the digital graphics profession.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aldus Manutius</span> Italian printer and humanist (1449/1452–1515)

Aldus Pius Manutius was an Italian printer and humanist who founded the Aldine Press. Manutius devoted the later part of his life to publishing and disseminating rare texts. His interest in and preservation of Greek manuscripts mark him as an innovative publisher of his age dedicated to the editions he produced. Aldus Manutius introduced the small portable book format with his enchiridia, which revolutionized personal reading and are the predecessor of the modern paperback book. He also helped to standardize use of punctuation including the comma and the semicolon.

<i>Hypnerotomachia Poliphili</i> 1499 incunable book

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, called in English Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream or The Dream of Poliphilus, is a book said to be by Francesco Colonna. It is a famous example of an incunable. The work was first published in 1499 in Venice by Aldus Manutius. This first edition has an elegant page layout, with refined woodcut illustrations in an Early Renaissance style. Hypnerotomachia Poliphili presents a mysterious arcane allegory in which the main protagonist, Poliphilo, pursues his love, Polia, through a dreamlike landscape. In the end, he is reconciled with her by the "Fountain of Venus".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Italic type</span> Font style with cursive typeface and slanted design

In typography, italic type is a cursive font based on a stylised form of calligraphic handwriting. Along with blackletter and roman type, it served as one of the major typefaces in the history of Western typography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antiqua (typeface class)</span> Typefaces that mimic 15C and 16C handwriting

Antiqua is a style of typeface used to mimic styles of handwriting or calligraphy common during the 15th and 16th centuries. Letters are designed to flow, and strokes connect together in a continuous fashion; in this way it is often contrasted with Fraktur-style typefaces where the individual strokes are broken apart. The two typefaces were used alongside each other in the germanophone world, with the Antiqua–Fraktur dispute often dividing along ideological or political lines. After the mid-20th century, Fraktur fell out of favor and Antiqua-based typefaces became the official standard in Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bembo</span> Serif typeface in 1495 Venetian style

Bembo is a serif typeface created by the British branch of the Monotype Corporation in 1928–1929 and most commonly used for body text. It is a member of the "old-style" of serif fonts, with its regular or roman style based on a design cut around 1495 by Francesco Griffo for Venetian printer Aldus Manutius, sometimes generically called the "Aldine roman". Bembo is named for Manutius's first publication with it, a small 1496 book by the poet and cleric Pietro Bembo. The italic is based on work by Giovanni Antonio Tagliente, a calligrapher who worked as a printer in the 1520s, after the time of Manutius and Griffo.

Francesco Griffo (1450–1518), also called Francesco da Bologna, was a fifteenth-century Italian punchcutter. He worked for Aldus Manutius, designing the printer's more important humanist typefaces, including the first italic type. He cut Roman, Greek, Hebrew and the first italic type. Aldus gives Griffo credit in the introduction of the Virgil of 1501. However, as Manutius had achieved a monopoly on italic printing and Greek publishing with the permission of the Venetian government, he had a falling-out with Griffo. Griffo then went to work for Gershom Soncino, whose family were Hebrew printers. It was with Soncino that Griffo's second italic type was cut in 1503. In 1516 he returned to Bologna where he began print publishing. In 1518 Griffo was charged with the murder of his son-in-law, who had been beaten to death with an iron bar. This is his last appearance in the historical record. He is presumed to have been executed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Printer's mark</span>

A printer's mark, device, emblem or insignia is a symbol that was used as a trademark by early printers starting in the 15th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Humanist minuscule</span> Handwriting style

Humanist minuscule is a handwriting or style of script that was invented in secular circles in Italy, at the beginning of the fifteenth century. "Few periods in Western history have produced writing of such great beauty", observes the art historian Millard Meiss. The new hand was based on Carolingian minuscule, which Renaissance humanists, obsessed with the revival of antiquity and their role as its inheritors, took to be ancient Roman:

[W]hen they handled manuscript books copied by eleventh- and twelfth-century scribes, Quattrocento literati thought they were looking at texts that came right out of the bookshops of ancient Rome".

Henry Ruxton Woudhuysen,, is a British academic specialising in Renaissance English literature. He is the Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, having been appointed in 2012. He was previously Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at University College London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfred F. Johnson</span> English academic librarian, bibliographer, curator and expert in typography

Alfred Forbes Johnson, MC was an English academic librarian, bibliographer, curator, and expert in typography. He was Deputy Keeper of Printed Books at the British Museum. He is author of many bibliographical reference works, and the standard Encyclopaedia of Typefaces.

The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) formed in 1991 in the United States on the initiative of scholars Jonathan Rose, Simon Eliot, and others.

Božidar Ljubavić, better known as Božidar Goraždanin, was founder of the Goražde printing house, the second Serbian language printing house and one of the earliest printing houses on the Balkans. Since 25 October 1519 he printed books on Cyrillic alphabet, first in Venice and then in the Church of Saint George in Sopotnica, Sanjak of Herzegovina, Ottoman Empire in period 1519–23. Only four printing presses were operational during the entire Ottoman period in Bosnia. The first press was press of Božidar Goraždanin while other three presses existed only in the 19th century. In 1523 his printing house became nonoperational.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aldine Bible</span> 1518 Greek Bible

The Aldine Bible is an edition of the Bible in Greek begun by Aldus Manutius, and published in Venice in 1518 by the Aldine Press. It is the first complete Bible printed entirely in Greek to be published.

The Oxford Companion to the Book is a comprehensive reference work that covers the history and production of books from ancient to modern times. It is edited by Michael F. Suarez, SJ, and H. R. Woudhuysen, and published by Oxford University Press.

Jan van Doesborch, also known as Jan van Doesborgh, John of Doesborch or John of Doesborowe, was a Dutch author, bookseller, printer, engraver, publisher and translator. During the course of his career as a printer and bookseller during the period roughly between 1502 and 1532, he published at least sixty books in various genres, including works of prose fiction, jest books, medieval legend, practical handbooks, and colonial travelogues. These books were mainly printed in either Dutch or English.

Michael F. Suarez, S.J. is Professor of English and Director of the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. He is editor-in-chief of the largest digital humanities project in the world: Oxford Scholarly Editions Online. He is a Jesuit priest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter D. McDonald</span> South African-born professor

Peter D. McDonald was born in Cape Town in 1964 and educated in South Africa and England. He is a Fellow of St. Hugh's College and Professor of English and Related Literature at the University of Oxford.

References

  1. ↑ Ambassador: National Italian American Foundation Quarterly 11 (Autumn 1991), pp. 13–15.
  2. ↑ Desktop Communications, 8.5 (Sept.-Oct. 1991), p. 34
  3. ↑ "Italica Press: Title List".
  4. ↑ "Italica Press | Authors".
  5. ↑ "Italica Press | Submission Guidelines for Authors, Translators, Editors".
  6. ↑ "Italica Press | Authors".
  7. ↑ "Studies in Art & History | Italica Press".
  8. ↑ Desktop Communications, 8.5 (Sept.-Oct. 1991), pp. 32-34.
  9. ↑ Oxford Companion to the Book, edited by Michael F. Suarez, S.J. and H. R. Woudhuysen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 164; and The Book: A Global History, edited by Michael F. Suarez, S.J. and H. R. Woudhuysen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 272.
  10. ↑ Small Press Center News for Independent Publishers and Readers, Spring 1995, pp. 3-5.
  11. ↑ Aldus Magazine 3.6 (Sept.-Oct. 1992), pp. 24–28.
  12. ↑ Helen Barolini, Aldus and His Dream Book: An Illustrated Essay (New York: Italica Press, 1992), pp. xvii–xix.
  13. ↑ Oxford Companion to the Book, edited by Michael F. Suarez, S.J. and H. R. Woudhuysen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 165; and The Book: A Global History, edited by Michael F. Suarez, S.J. and H. R. Woudhuysen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 273.
  14. ↑ Small Press Center News for Independent Publishers and Readers, Spring 1995, pp. 3-5.
  15. ↑ The Medieval Review, November 13, 2002. Reviewed by Alan M. Stahl
  16. ↑ Aldus Magazine 3.6 (Sept.-Oct. 1992), pp. 24–28.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.